How to Draw Cute Animals by Angela Nguyen
My rating: 5/5 cats
WELCOME TO MAY PROJECT!! last year, i used this author’s book How to Draw Cute Stuff: Draw Anything and Everything in the Cutest Style Ever! for a monthly project (link here). and then she went out and published THIS book which removes all the ‘who cares’ stuff like vehicles and humans and plants and whatever and filled in those gaps with MOAR ANIMALS! so obviously, i’m all over it. there are FIFTY-FIVE different animals included, each one cuter than the one before. or after. both. somehow. ANYWAY, so it’s going to be tough deciding who doesn’t make it onto this project-ark. ALTHOUGH I AM PRETTY SURE THOSE FLOODWATERS ARE GOING TO BE CHOCK FULL OF BIRDS. i’m not good enough at drawing to be all heroic with this – the best i can do with my limited skills is to try and approximate her examples, not go off and create something inspired by them. i am strictly ‘monkey see, monkey do’ when it comes to art. or, more precisely, ‘monkey see, monkey do but in a not-as-good, kind of wobbly way. monkey doodoo.’ okay, without further ado-doo: MAY PROJECT!
MAY 1: i am still shattered by what happened to those walruses on the second episode of Our Planet, so i am trying to overwrite that imagery in my head with these cute, happy walruses living out their long fat happy walrus lives with plenty of room for walrusing.
denial is strong, de-drawings are okay.
MAY 2: armor-dillos!!!
mine look more like hippos in sweater vests and kangol caps, but i do remember reading somewhere that in the wild, most hippos take their fashion cues from samuel l jackson, so this all scans.
MAY 3:
oh, man, i otter be better at drawing these little fellas. COME FOR CRITTERS STAY FOR PUNS!
MAY 4:
a blessing of narwhals!
okay, and now, in the interest of being EDUCATIVE as well as WILDLY ENTERTAINING, going forward, i shall not only doodle cute animals, but also teach a short course in collective animal nouns. so: a group of walruses is called A HERD or A POD or A HUDDLE. a group of armadillos is called A ROLL. a group of otters is called A BEVY or A FAMILY or A LODGE or A ROMP or A RAFT (when they are in the water). there. we learned four things together. twenty-seven more facts to come.
MAY 5:
a group of hippos is called A HERD or A POD but also A CRASH or A THUNDER or A BLOAT. a group of them is also called an AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH when they are stampeding over you.
MAY 6:
a group of lemurs is called A CONSPIRACY! because you KNOW they are up to no good…
MAY 7:
a group of hamsters is called A HORDE! is one thing we learned here today. the other is that i will never achieve my dream of becoming a famous hamster portraitist because hamsters are apparently really difficult to draw! that, or it’s just a newly discovered disability of mine. those do keep cropping up, after all…
MAY 8:
a group of rabbits is called A FLUFFLE or A COLONY or A HERD, and also some other terms, but i pretty much stopped reading after i saw the word fluffle.
MAY 9:
a group of hedgehogs is called AN ARRAY or A PRICKLE. it is also called A DORABLE.
MAY 10:
a group of turtles is called A BALE. ALL HAIL MY BALE!
MAY 11:
photobucket is being TERRIBLE right now, so you can’t even see the llamas i drawed. hopefully it will be fixed by tomorrow? for now, at least, a lesson in collective nouns: a group of llamas, deferred or not, is called A CRIA HERD.
here they are! not really worth the wait, but hopefully today’s drawing will be better!
MAY 12:
a group of whales is called A POD or A SCHOOL or A GAM or A HERD or A MOB! a mommy whale is called MOMMY. happy mother’s day to all of you whose day this is!
MAY 13:
i did not realize there would be such CONTENTION over the matter of collective animal nouns, but i suppose if a thing exists, then there’s gonna be disagreement about the thing. SO – although great chunks of internet claim there is no collective noun for octopus because they are o so solitary, wikipedia asserts that a group of octopus is called A RALLY.
as far as squids go, a group of squid is called A SHOAL. officially. however, several years ago, a petition went ‘round to change the collective noun to A SQUAD, which situation dominates the results page when you go a-googling what a group of squid is called. but for all that, further research indicates that the petition only got 80 signatures, and the word was never officially accepted by SCIENCE, although no one gave reference.com the memo, and they stand by their assertion that a group of squid is called A SQUAD, so you can blame them if you get it wrong on some future trivia night.
https://www.reference.com/pets-animal…
MAY 14:
internet says that platypus are too solitary a beast to necessitate the existence of a collective noun, but BEGRUDGINGLY offers up that one COULD refer to them as A PADDLE or A PUDDLE. if one wanted to. WELL, ONE WANTS TO!
MAY 15:
a group of beavers is called A COLONY.
beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers beavers
MAY 16:
again, internet claims there is no real name for a group of sloths for the same reasons of their being solitary creatures. WHY ARE SO MANY ANIMALS SO LONELY?? but then it amends its stance to say that they could be called, when altogether, A BED or A SLUMBER of sloths. so let’s do that.
MAY 17:
a group of elephants is called A PARADE or A MEMORY. boring people call them A HERD. but we are not boring people.
MAY 18:
here is why i bought this book:
a group of red pandas is called A PACK. a group of regular pandas is called AN EMBARRASSMENT. they are embarrassed because they are not as cute as red pandas.
MAY 19:
a group of raccoons is called A GAZE. i forgot to color in the tree that little guy is clinging to, but i colored the other l’il trash panda with a fancy SILVER METALLIC MARKER, which makes up for (and may have actually caused) the oversight. like a raccoon – like A GAZE of raccoons – i am distracted by shiny objects.
MAY 20:
sometimes, there are too damn many collective nouns for creatures. from now on, i am just going to go with the cutest one. therefore, a group of ducks is called A PADDLING. and i know i said ‘no birds,’ but sometimes the heart softens. don’t make me regret this, ducks!
MAY 21:
a group of giraffes is called A TOWER. youse guys, it is getting on towards the end of the month. there are some tough decisions ahead…
MAY 22:
a group of cats is called A CLOWDER. internet says, It can also be called A GLARING, particularly if the cats are uncertain of each other.
capital letters are mine, ironically. source is here.
IN CRAFTING NEWS, i also used this book to make a cat bookmark for chloë:
which makes this as good a place as any to show off the tent felty i made for connor back when i was doing the How to Draw Cute Stuff: Draw Anything and Everything in the Cutest Style Ever! project:
source material:
MAY 23:
a group of sharks is called A SHIVER. and what do you do to warm someone when they are shivering? HUGGAS!!!
MAY 24:
a group of bears is called A SLOTH!
these are the finest photographs i have ever taken. give me award.
MAY 25:
a group of frogs is called AN ARMY. and where does the frog general keep his armies? IN HIS SLEEVIES!
MAY 26:
a group of rhinos is called A CRASH. interestingly enough, that is also called what happened to my dinner tonight.
MAY 27:
a group of mice is called A MISCHIEF. because duh.
MAY 28:
a group of owls, as jennifer has already informed us, is called A PARLIAMENT.
RATE THE PARLIAMENTS! these are the ones i drew during the project for her other book How to Draw Cute Stuff: Draw Anything and Everything in the Cutest Style Ever!:
have i improved or gotten worse? CAST YOUR VOTES! self-assessment: i do not know what wings look like. those are ROUGH.
MAY 29:
a group of deer is called A HERD! which, duh, obvie, but give me a break, BEA started today and i am EXHAUSTED. also give me a break on those horns. i am bad at drawing. but i have hundreds of new books, so i’m doing all right…
MAY 30:
a group of pigs is called A SOUNDER.
although internet, spec. ask.com, gets real nitpicky:
The name for a group of pigs depends on the animals’ ages. A group of young pigs is called a drift, drove or litter. Groups of older pigs are called a sounder of swine, a team or passel of hogs or a singular of boars.
but i said ‘cutest wins’ and cutest is SOUNDER!
MAY 31:
a group of kangaroos is called A MOB!
okay, and that’s all the days that may has in it. i meant to draw many more from this book – i didn’t even do the FOX*, for goodness’ sake. i did START the fox page one day, but i thought my foxes were uggo, and i was going to go back and then… didn’t. maybe i will in the future? when we have hoverboards? i hope you had fun learning about animals! here are more places to find collective nouns for animals:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/19-ani…
https://gizmodo.com/have-a-kindle-of-…
https://owlcation.com/stem/collective…
https://www.businessinsider.com/odd-n…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of…
https://cottagelife.com/outdoors/8-ad…
in conclusion: ANIMALS!
* a group of fox is called A SKULK.
