It’s day 2 of Inktober, and it’s water buffalo time. These are big, impressive and pensive beasts that you don’t want to mess with. They were chewing their cud in the sun, keeping an eye on us as we admired them from a distance when we saw them at Animal Kingdom, Disney World.

I sketched them using a Lamy Safari fine nib and Platinum Carbon ink. Carbon ink lays down a shiny black line that takes forever to dry and so is my least favourite waterproof black fountain pen ink to sketch with (De Atramentis Document Ink is first place, with R&K Sketch Ink Lotte and Noodler’s Bulletproof Black in the middle of the pack). Since I was afraid of smudging the ink, it’s kind of a barebones sketch.

There was a delightful cast member standing nearby, ready to answer questions, and he was a massive Star Wars fan. He clocked my brother and I’s Star Wars Celebration shirts and we started talking Star Wars while standing in front of these guys and gals’ paddock. Of course he got a cast compliment from us (talking to him made our day), and we got to hear about past Star Wars events at the parks from behind the scenes.

The funny thing is that if we would have rushed past their paddock on the way to see the tigers (like everybody else did), we wouldn’t have had this moment and memory, and the tigers everyone was rushing to see decided to hide in the shade anyway.