Sketching, Illustration, Design and Everyday Life.
Copyright by © Nina Khashchina except where noted.
This is a glance into my year-end summary of things. One of my metrics is how many sketchbooks I filled - and this year I managed to finish my sketchbook #163 on December 31st! Which means that I got to start a new sketchbook on the very first day of the year!! But within the 365 days of 2025 I worked in six sketchbooks (I was about 1/2 way through the #158 when the year began). All of these sketchbooks have many additional pages taped and glued in, so it is hard to judge by the number only. For example, my sketchbook 163 gained over 500 grams from the things that I added to it! Somehow stickers were not applied to sketchbook #159 :) (and #162 - but that one has such a gorgeous paper on the cover that stickers could not compete!). Last Year I worked in 4 1/2 sketchbooks, a year before that - in 7. I linked previous "year in sketchbook" posts below if you are interested.
Bonaire has a large population of donkeys that descend from the animals brought by Spanish settlers many years ago. Now they are feral, and you can see them everywhere. In fact, there are so many of them that there is even a donkey sanctuary. But I met this cheerful burrow as it was passing our place of residence.
Bonaire also has lots of feral goats that I saw, but somehow I did not sketch even one. However, a bunch of cats visited our house. One of them had an ear clipped, and based on the fact that all other cats would run away as soon as this gorgeous blackness with whiskers appeared on the fence, I thought that the ear was damaged in some important war. Later, I found out that Bonaire has a program for Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), and as a result, cats get the ear clip. We observed daily people-watching and bird-catching activities, but for me, the best part was the impression this character left on other cats.
Apart from these two visitors, we were regularly entertained by a small flock of brown-throated parakeets (prikichi in papiamenu) who, in their endemic to Bonaire version, have a very radiant yellow head. My problem with drawing these birds was the fact that I did not bring a bright enough green pencil :)
