Awww!

"What's black and white and warm all over? A penguin in a wetsuit, naturally. Sounds like a joke, but it's quite serious for biologists at the California Academy of Sciences, who had a wetsuit created for an African penguin to help him get back in the swim of things.

Pierre, a venerable 25 years old, was going bald, which left him with an embarrassingly exposed, pale pink behind.

Unlike marine mammals, which have a layer of blubber to keep them warm, penguins rely on their waterproof feathers. Without them, Pierre was unwilling to plunge into the academy's penguin tank and ended up shivering on the sidelines while his 19 peers played in the water.

'He was cold; he would shake,' said Pam Schaller, a senior aquatic biologist at the academy."
To read the rest of Michelle Locke's MSNBC article, click here.

More From The Archives

Here's a piece that I did for a friend's wedding. They used the art on mugs that they set out on the reception tables - the guests could take them home as gifts!

I like to use brush pens for their finished feel, but it's hard to do an entire drawing without mistakes. The felt-tip kind that I use smear easily, and that's bad for lefties like me! Regardless, I think it (and the mugs) turned out pretty well.

The tricky part was that the drawing would be printed in white on a black mug! That's why nothing is colored in on the original - I didn't want to commit to something, and then find out that it inverted poorly later.

NOTE: I cheated and tweaked this a little in Photoshop. Compare it with the mug photo and discover what's driven me nuts for years!