Endangered
These are the smallest of the quolls. They are the size of a large kitten, ranging from only 3/4 of a pound up to a pound and a half. They are carnivorous marsupials living in Northern Australia. Their tail is almost as long as their head and body length. Males only live for one year because they die after mating. Females can live up to 3 years in the wild. Unfortunately, back in 1935, cane toads were introduced in order to eat beetles that were causing problems with sugar cane crops. Cane toads are toxic, enough so that the quoll doesn't survive eating them. It was found that they could be taught to avoid them. They are fed a cane toad small enough it won't kill them, and medication that will make them feel sick is added to it. They learn that eating that thing is not a good idea. The quoll that were taught to dislike the toads were released in the wild and were found to live longer than those that weren't given the aversion training. Unfortunately, though they did live longer they did not survive long. They were all killed by dingos or cats.
I have always been the sort of artist who tries for as much realism, detail, and accuracy as my talent would allow me. I absolutely love artwork that has a less structured feel to it though, I just have never been able to manage it. One of the challenges I am setting myself this second series is to try and relax my style a bit at least with the oils and pastels. While I have decided I absolutely will be doing the 6x6" oil paintings, and I enjoy the bit of a lazy break charcoal drawings provide me, I'm not sold yet on the size and style with pastels. I love working with pastel, they really are one of my favourite mediums to use. The thing is, I am wanting to force myself to grow and doing a favourite medium isn't likely to make you grow much. I may end up doing oil paintings every week day, pastels on Saturday and charcoal on Sunday. I have not decided, and you'll find out along with me I suppose. Last series changed as it progressed so I am ok with this changing as well. I was only doing one medium, but I went from only allowing myself to put down colour once and then not touching it again to doing more than one layer of colour. I started with only watercolour pencils and then added in ink pencils as well. I can point to the very painting that I did last year I first used the ink pencils since that was the first one with real dark black.