What is brown and sounds like a bell?

Dung. Or a Dung beetle to be precise. I found a dung beetle in my basement, it had crawled out of the ash pit under the fireplace. I have never used the fireplace but the grackles drop all sorts of crap down the chimney including themselves. Beetle Heaven.

This drawing has over twenty hours of work into it, I find color pencil can be very tedious to use but has a look that can be worth it. For me the color study was about texture and the nature of the grid work applied to the background and the beetle.

“Dung Beetle”, Color Pencil on paper, 14” x 17”, 2009-08-18