Capybara Madness

Me with the band Capybara

Believe it or don’t, there is a band called Capybara! I admit, Capybara is a great name for just about anything but still I was surprised when I learned that. Surprised and excited! I thought, this is going to be great! It will be just the kind of music I like. I won’t have to thrumm in displeasure like I do at Johnny Cash. Or just close my ears (one of the big perks of being a capybara is that we can literally close our ears) when my owner plays classical or The Cars. I do like The Killers and, of course Mountain Kids Fantasy, but how would they compare to a band named Capybara? Surely Capybara’s music would consist of just the kinds of noises I make all the time. I don’t like to brag but people often compare my voice to the songs of birds.

Anyway, Capybara the band came to Austin last month and I got to meet them one day at Austin Java! They are all really, really super nice guys. They pet me and fed me blueberries and I even took a little walk with them. I also did some of my best eeping just to show them that I know a bit about music myself.

Well, they must have been impressed because they came back the next weekend and met me in Garrison Park in South Austin where we shot a music video together! We recorded a song called Magpies, which was perfect for me even though the band really does not sound like capybaras at all and not even that much like magpies. I am 100% positive that this is their best video ever because I added a bunch of my eeps to it. I think I really got the rhythm of the music and inserted my voice at just the right times. Plus I insisted that we walk around a little which makes the video so much more interesting. Well, you just need to watch and listen and judge for yourselves.

Thanks guys! That was sooo much fun. Let me know if you want me to go on tour with you!

Anyone who knows me knows that I love art. Specifically, I love art featuring capybaras, and especially specifically I love art featuring me. You may have seen the other posts in my Capybara Art category (press the link on the left sidebar). Those are really great pieces of art and I love them all. Actually, I can hardly even begin to give proper thanks to my original stalker Jim Perry, to Terry Stanley, Jeff  Djayasaputra and, most recently, Grace Warrington. They are all professional artists with real affinities for animals and capybaras in particular.

What amazes me is how many wonderful ways there are to depict me in art. The four paintings above are all so unique in style and medium and in the feelings that they invoke in the viewer. I couldn’t possibly say which I like best. I honestly love them all!

With this in mind, it occured to me (and my owner) that one way to connect with school kids is through art and through their participation in the creation of art. That is why we have started handing out Caplin Coloring Pages when we go to schools. My owner did the drawings and, as she says, she can draw but she is no artist! But the kids can fill in the artist part with the outline on the coloring page just serving as a template. We are hoping that this type of activity will also help the kids understand and appreciate capybaras. Coloring my likeness should help them remember what I look like. That is the theory anyway.

Two of the schools I went to in October sent me images of some of the colorings done by their students. I think they are wonderfully creative. Most of them are based on this drawing of me.

The kids at the San Marcos Montessori  saw this picture which helps to explain their color choices.

I think I look pretty cool all colorful like that. The kids did a great job!

We visited a 2nd grade class at Kiker Elemetary School. My owner gave them a greater choice of coloring pages partly because they were older and partly because she created more pages. She put more detail on the original page too. And I think you can see that these students did not see her colorful version. Amazing how that affects the coloring style!

Pretty great work by all the kids, I’d say!

If you’d like coloring pages, please send me an email using the contacts page and I will email you the jpg images.

If you are in Central Texas and would like me to visit your school for a capybara encounter, send us an email using the contacts page.

Us with painting by Grace Warrington

If a picture paints a 1000 words then a painting is worth a million words. Or something like that. Anyway, the painting that Grace Warrington did of me and my owner is worth at least a million words. More like a million dollars. More like priceless. Look what a great job she did of catching us in a candid moment. It’s so funny how we both have our eyes all squinty-shut! And you can see, Grace caught my owner’s big teeth perfectly while just hinting at mine. I love that subtle comparison.

I kissed a painting of my owner!

My owner first showed me the painting while I was getting ready for the Halloween Costume Contest which is why I have a green stripe in the photo above. More to the point is that it was so lifelike that I just had to kiss the image of my owner in the painting. That was funny because the me in the painting is kissing the other side of her face.  Just shows how much I love my owner.

Grace Warrington working on our portrait

This is an image that Grace sent us while she was working on the portrait. You can’t even imagine how excited we were when we saw this. Grace picked the image to use out of all the images we have up on the web in various locations. We didn’t even know it was going to be both of us. She picked just the right one to capture the true capybara-owner bond! (But why does my owner have to make her fingers into rabbit ears behind me? I am NOT a rabbit.)

Make sure you check out Grace’s web page. She always shows her work in progress on her page. As I am writing it she is doing a beautiful rendition of a very strikingly colored cat. She even has a whole series showing her work on our painting that you can see here. It’s amazing to see how the work progressed, especially for a capybara since we are not known for our artistic abilities.

Emily & Elizabeth with Balloon Capybara

I have some of the most amazing friends in the world…and they’re not even all capybaras! I’d like you to meet two special friends, Emily and Elizabeth. Sure, they are cute human kids and we have that cute thing in common, but we also share another special attribute.

Elizabeth & Emily also have their own book! Seriously! (Probably their mom takes credit for their book just the way my owner takes credit for mine. That is lame.)

Did you notice what they are holding in the photo? It is a balloon capybara! Sadly, it turns out that capybaras are very hard to render in balloon. I think they did a pretty good job though. I especially like the color they chose. But the picture should give you a hint as to what their book is about. It is a instruction guide on how to make balloon animals. Who wouldn’t want to do that?

You can read more about them, their book and their fun encounters with everyone’s favorite capybara (me) on their blog. The title of their book is Kids Show Kids How to Make Balloon Animals. It’s a great idea for children’s parties and other events.

I think it would be fun if y’all would try to beat Emily & Elizabeth’s capybara-balloon rendition and send me photos of your creations. I’ll add the photos to this post. Come on! Let’s see how creative my fans can be.

Here’s something about capybaras that startled even me: we are great muses! I mean, my owner wrote a book–a whole book!–in just five months after getting me. She didn’t have anything worth writing about before that.

But that’s not where it ends. Terry Howell Stanley of Stanley Arts recently painted me and I look GREAT. This photo does not do it justice. In reality the background uses metallic colors that just sweep you off your paws. And the red outline draws your eye toward me, where it belongs. The painting is gorgeous and my owner is going to get it framed to hang in a place of honor and esteem in our house.

Thank you so much for this wonderful painting, Terry!

Me with my painting by Terry Stanley