A few things I've learned about rabbits and hares

While working on the Useful Calendar, I try to learn as much as I can about the featured animal, which I choose based on the Chinese luni-solar calendar and zodiac. The Year of the Rabbit begins on Jan. 22, 2023, and so I have been immersed in many things rabbit for the last several months.

Naturally, I began by trying to find out what species of rabbits are native to China so I could choose a proper representative for the year. Instead, I learned that there are no rabbits native to China, only hares. That's why the leaping leporid* that graces January in my Year of the Rabbit calendar card is really a hare: Lepus sinensis, the Chinese hare, to be exact. (*Leporid means any rabbit or hare.)

Even though we casually use the words rabbit, hare, and bunny interchangeably, rabbits and hares are distinctly different animals—and bunny is just a nickname often used for rabbits. Both belong to the family Lagomorph, which also includes the pika, an adorable small mammal that is native both to China and North America, and resembles a rabbit in some ways, but has short rounded ears and other distinctions. I did not include any pikas in the 2023 Useful Calendar, but I do plan to include them in the upcoming 2023 Annual: The Rabbit Zine. (And, no, if you're wondering, the pika is not the model for the Pokemon character Pikachu, despite the name, which is apparently coincidental.)

The Chinese zodiac was developed more than 2,000 years ago, in the 5th century BCE, as a way for an illiterate population to keep track of days, months and years. there were definitely no actual rabbits in China at that time. All rabbits in China today are fairly recent descendants of the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus). 

The European rabbit is the species of all domesticated rabbits, whether for pets, food, fur, or talismans. I remember one time when I was a kid and brought home a lucky rabbit's foot that I had bought with my allowance, thinking it to be the coolest thing, and so soft! My mother eyed it with barely disguised horror at the grotesquery that my little relic really was, and my father said, "It wasn't very lucky for the rabbit, was it?" That certainly gave me something to think about.

In the wild, this is the rabbit species known for its burrowing habit, creating a network of underground tunnels that are extended over generations—a literal rabbit warren. Other species of rabbits, such as the cottontails native to the Americas, will dig shallow depressions for nests, called forms, but are not known for tunneling like the European rabbit.

Rabbits and hares are really fast runners and capable of zig-zagging as they run to evade capture by predators. Depending on which sources you check (and which species of hare), hares can run from 35 mph to 45 mph. Even the eastern cottontail rabbit, which is a lot smaller than a hare, can run 18 mph, and make hairpin turns while doing it. I remember my father describing how, when he was a boy, his dog would be chasing a rabbit at full speed, and suddenly the rabbit would change directions and the dog would wipe out trying to make the same turn. 

The main distinctions between rabbits and hares are that hares are generally bigger, lankier and have longer legs and ears than rabbits; baby hares are called leverets and are born fully furred, eyes open, and ready to run, whereas baby rabbits, called kits, are born naked and blind.  

Jackrabbits are really American hares, so-called because their long ears resemble those of a mule, or jackass. Belgian hares are really a breed of domesticated European rabbit developed to resemble a hare.

Now that the calendar is done and the holiday bustle largely behind me, I look forward to going through my notes, finishing the book about rabbits that I started to read, and returning to the websites and online articles I've bookmarked for "later," to write about the most interesting bits for my rabbit zine.

A tiny Free Little Art Gallery inside my Little Free Library

 

I first heard of a free little art gallery as a place to exchange art locally when an artist in my area (South Minneapolis) installed a box on a post — the sort of thing that would usually be used as a Little Free Library — and called it a free little art gallery. She announced its arrival to our artist network, the League of Longfellow Artists (LoLa), and I remember paying it a visit and contributing some tiny art of my own. I don't remember if I took anything or, if so, what it was. This was nearly 10 years ago and I am relating this strictly from memory, which, as I'm sure you know, is never reliable. 

I have seen more things written about Free Little Art Galleries in the last couple of years; they seem to have become rather a big deal after the pandemic shut-downs began. It appears that the credit for starting the whole movement goes to Doug Millison and a group of artists in the San Francisco Bay area in 2013, to foster community and connections through the exchange of art. "By making and sharing free art, we seek to liberate our thinking and open more fully to the world and to each other," they write in the mission statement on their blog (linked above).

I have had this idea in the back of my mind ever since we installed our Little Free Library last year, but I didn't want to give up on the book exchange that is its original purpose, so I envisioned it as a subsection integrated amongst the books. Finally, a few weeks ago, I took some measurements and designed a kind of display box that wouldn't displace too many books but could still hold very small artworks for exchange, such as ATCs (artist trading cards). 

My art exchange display box in progress; it measures 7 inches long by 4.5 inches wide and deep.

The finished tiny gallery box installed in my Little Free Library

The box can be taken out to examine the contents.

I wanted to get it in place in time for the LoLa Art Crawl, which happens this weekend, Sept. 17–18 (2022), and I managed to do that just this morning (Sept. 15). It will remain in place hereafter, of course, and I look forward to seeing what happens with it. I even made a tiny zine about it — to give away, of course, and which you will find in my tiny Free Little Art Gallery. 

Tiny original art in the form of drawings, collages, paint-by-numbers, misc. paper crafting, etc., as well as literary art like short poems and stories are all welcome as long as they are no bigger than 3x5 inches and appropriate for all ages. Art by kids especially welcome and encouraged. 

You can find it, and me this weekend, at site no. 4 of the LoLa Art Crawl. I will have notecards featuring my artwork and several zines besides this free one (although some are this tiny), plus a few handmade journals and lidded boxes. 

To find a Free Little Art Gallery near you, try Find a Free Little Art Gallery.

Finishing up the Tiger Zine

It's not so much that I procrastinate. It's more like I get distracted and side-tracked, like a cat that hears a faint rustle in the bushes and must go investigate, forgetting about its intended destination. 

So although I started gathering information and writing articles many months ago for what I have chosen to call my annual zine, meant to be a compendium of informative tidbits I have collected in the process of researching and making the Useful Calendar each year; and even though by April I had completed a few longish articles about research-heavy topics like worldwide efforts to save wild tigers from extinction — because 2022 is the year of the tiger — sometime in May, it just stalled. 

This happens in part because I often sabotage my own efforts by gathering too much information and then feeling overwhelmed by it all. A case of TLDR only for the one doing the writing — too long, didn't finish! When mid-August came around, I was seriously considering abandoning the project, but then I thought about how much time and effort I had already put into it, including creating new artwork just for this zine, and I asked myself, What will it take for me to finish this? 

Well, I decided that I would not write those few articles that I had originally intended to include but had not yet written, even though I had gathered the information and found the subjects worthy and fascinating. I told myself there will always be another zine, I can always find a place for that topic if it's really important to me to write it. 

Then I looked at the draft document and realized that it was exactly 24 pages with just a few small gaps that needed filling either with new artwork or a short snippet of text. Well, any multiple of 4 pages can be made into a booklet, so suddenly the completion of my tiger zine was within reach. I was finally energized to finish it. I did two illustrations for the section on the evolution of cats (above) and a third of catnip (which I have growing in my yard), wrote a very short piece about tigers and catnip (yes, they like it), and selected a poetry excerpt for the last page, which goes nicely with an illustration I already had. Done, and done! 

I'll debut it during the LoLa Art Crawl, September 17–18, and then make it available in my Etsy shop and possibly at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, if they want it (they usually do want my zines, but last year's annual zine didn't sell very well, so I have no expectations regarding this one). 

It's kind of funny, too, how I can't seem to motivate myself to adopt a daily drawing practice, but when I need an illustration (or two or three) in order to finish a zine, I can sit down and really focus on getting them done without being led astray by distractions. I do enjoy it when I'm in the midst of creating the illustration, and I often say to myself, I should do this more often. 

I guess I just need to make more zines.

A Little Guide to Getting a Thing Done in a fun mini zine format

 

I've been playing around with a variation on a clever book form known as a meander, a kind of accordion-fold book made from one sheet of paper or, in this case, cardstock. If you do a Google search on the term "meander book," you'll find a lot of examples, instructions, and tutorials. 

The variation involves making pockets at three points where the folding of the book turns a corner. I made a template in InDesign that allows me to put content on both sides of the paper and have everything be right side up once it's assembled (no small feat!), then I blended some ideas, illustrations and content from some of my previous projects with new material I've been wanting to use that all go together thematically. I named it "A Little Guide to Getting a Thing Done," and so, of course, it's a very practical little zine in a fun package. 

I then realized that the advice applies equally to overcoming procrastination (what the title refers to), changing a habit (noted in in the subtitle) or solving a problem (not stated, because there's only so long a title can be, especially on something as small as this!)

I'm acutely aware of the irony that I started working on this, and finished it, as a detour from finishing my 2022 annual zine inspired by the Useful Calendar theme, the Year of the Tiger. That's still in progress, while this is done!

The book is about 2 inches wide by 2-3/4 inches high and a quarter inch thick. The pockets each hold a little card with an image on one side and a quote on the other, with one of the quotes coming from a dictionary. They relate to the theme of the book, of course, in slightly surprising and possibly amusing ways!

Today I brought 10 of these down to the Minnesota Center for Book Arts to sell in their shop. That includes one display copy, because people need to open it up and examine it, of course. The other nine are enclosed in little cellophane sleeves so they don't all get handled.

It's also available in my Etsy shop, here, with more photos, because you can't pick it up and examine it there!

Magical collage ATCs with security envelopes and a hat trick

 The theme for my little swap group this month was magic and/or secrets. We make artist trading cards (ATCs) based on the theme (or prompts, you could say), and everyone is free to not only interpret it however they like, but to disregard the theme altogether if it's just not working for them or they are jazzed about something else.

I decided to do two different kinds of magic — stage magic and the mystical stuff usually spelled "magick." But I started with a nod to the idea of secrets by using security envelopes for my background.

I often save security envelopes for their interesting patterns — not my original idea, but inspired by other artists who have used them. I included with that collection part of a paper bread bag that had a nice pattern that just kind of went with the envelopes. That's the light brown with blue dots above on the left.

I pasted the strips onto a piece of 100 lb card stock I had cut to 7-1/2" wide by 7" high to make six ATCs. I had drawn the cut lines on the card stock before glueing the strips so I could place them with that in mind.

So here they are all cut and ready for the next step. I wanted to feature a magician with a rabbit that could be pulled out of a hat. I drew the rabbit, then scanned it and shrunk it down (the original drawing was about 6 inches high) and printed seven of them on some white card stock (in case one got damaged when I was cutting them out). 

I searched online for an image of a magician, found a free one that was quite low resolution, so enlarged him to about 600–700% in Photoshop and traced some of the lines to make them sharper before making him the size I wanted, then printed seven of him too, on fairly thin paper that had something else printed on the back. I printed the rabbit on previously printed material as well.

  I sketched a top hat on a scrap of card stock and cut it out to use as a pattern, and traced it onto the back of some decorative paper with a black background and spattered gold and silver metallic splotches on it. I had some shiny gold paper I may have salvaged from an envelope lining (I don't really remember), so used that to make a hat band.

I cut the slit for the rabbit after glueing the hat in place, making two cuts so the slot was about a millimeter wide. Hopefully, you can see that in this detail. (Maybe if you click to enlarge it you will see the black strip by the ears, which is the pocket on the back of the ATC that holds the rabbit.)

The righthand card is the back, as you may have guessed. The vertical rectangle on the right side is the pocket that holds the rabbit, attached along the edge on all sides. On the left, a band of the same paper holds an accordion fold booklet, which you can see more of below.

To represent the other kind of Magick, I did a little searching on Etsy and bought a PDF called "13 Witch's Runes" from a shop called Like It All.  Although she had it nicely set up in narrow columns and two rows on a single page, I tinkered with the format first in Photoshop and then in InDesign so that I could print them at about 3-1/4" high, back to back. To make all the columns the same width, I added one and made a "cover" using assorted glyphs available in my font collection.

I am very aware of how lucky I am to have all of these tools at my disposal!

Here's the skinny booklet opened up: 

I really have no idea how one is supposed to use these symbols and the information about them; perhaps with some sort of oracle deck? I just like the symbolism and the mystique and thought it would be a fun addition to the cards.

By the way, I had to look up "grimoire" — it's a book of magic spells.

It was fun to start with a vision of what I wanted to create — a rabbit that could be pulled out of a hat, with the extra trickery of the creature being bigger than the hat — and then go about making it happen. The six doing the swap this month included myself, so I did make one to keep. I've actually picked it up and pulled my little rabbit out a few times, just because. Maybe I'll do a little research to learn what one is supposed to do with those runes, too. It might even inspire some additional art projects.

 

Making Collage ATCs With a Masterboard a la Margarete Miller

 I swap Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) with a group of friends, and on several occasions some of them have mentioned making their cards by starting with a collage masterboard, which means you collage a larger sheet, then cut it into individual ATCs (2.5" by 3.5"), and add some details to each one.

For some reason, I have long been skeptical of doing that, but finally decided to give it a try when the number of participants grew slightly — from typically 5 or 6 each month to potentially 8 to 10. Not exactly an overwhelming number, you might think, but I actually kind of panicked, because the way I make the cards, one at a time from start to finish, is pretty time-consuming. So I decided to give it a try to see if it would streamline my process.

The technique is championed by Margarete Miller, who is kind of a collage art influencer, in that she sponsors collage art challenges and makes tutorial videos, and her own artwork is very appealing. So I watched her video demonstrating how she goes about making a masterboard, in this case for a set of postcards.

I had initially resisted watching a how-to video on making a collage. I mean, I do know how to cut and paste, duh! But I decided to watch it anyway, just to see if I could pick up any helpful tips, and of course I did. The first thing, which had never occurred to me, was to place the elements without glueing them down yet, then take a photo for reference before beginning to glue. That was kind of a forehead slap for me, and very helpful.

The second thing, which she actually did first, but I didn't appreciate until I had begun to glue things down, is to draw where your cut lines are going to be. This became especially important to me, as I was using a letter-size base (8.5" x 11"), which meant I'd be trimming some away when I cut my ATCs. To avoid placing something I really liked in a spot where maybe I would end up having to trim, I added my cut lines after I had glued a couple of things down.

Our theme for this swap was botanicals, but I wasn't really focused on that as I made my masterboard. I kind of thought of it as a generic background, figuring I would add the botanical part after cutting them. 

I decided to leave off the paper tape measure in the end. It just didn't really work for me.

Cut into ATCs, but not "botanical" yet.

It's hard to say whether making my cards this way actually saved me any time, since I spent a lot of time on each card anyway. But I enjoyed the whole process, and felt that having the common background elements helped the individual cards relate to each other more than sometimes happens when I do them individually from the start. And there's a lot to be said for not starting with a blank "canvas" for each card!

I'm definitely going to use this technique again; in fact, I'm working on a smaller set (6 ATCs) for our March swap, which I'll show you after I finish them.