I can’t believe it… it’s only 8 weeks, come Sunday, until I am stood on the decks of that beautiful big white ship, MV Oriana. Eight weeks! It seems like just a month or so ago that I went down to Southampton on a warm sunny day for my interview…. but that was way back in March!
MV Oriana dockside in the Cape Verde Islands 2003
What shall I be doing on the ship, apart from being totally in awe that I am there? As a Guest Art Presenter, I shall be holding two art sessions on board every sea day for the passengers that wish to come along. This is the first time that I shall be teaching on board, on my previous four cruises with Julie, I was her assistant. So I am naturally a little apprehensive about my change in role… but something I am also greatly looking forward to as well.
As for the journey…. We shall leave Southampton early in January for the start of Oriana’s World Cruise. It will be a five week trip with the following ports of call….Rome*, Athens*, Cairo, through the Suez Canal*, Sharm El Sheikh* (Egypt), Salalah & Muscat (Oman), Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Mumbai* & Cochin (India), Colombo (Sri Lanka), Phuket (Thailand), Penang* (Malaysia), Singapore*, Kemaman (Malaysia), Vung Tau (Vietnam) and finally Hong Kong* – from where I shall disembark and fly home. I am really excited about the chance to see these fantastic places, seven of which I have been to before on previous cruises (marked *) - so it will be really good to get back there and explore them a little bit more.
I haven’t written anything for a long time about what I’ve been working on at the zoo, so here’s a ‘brief’ synopsis.This year I have drawn and painted 17 species of animals so far;- 5 invertebrates (discosoma and zenia soft corals, a ghost mantis, a giant hairy scorpion and a long-spined sea urchin), 8 fish (rainbow and blue-tailed goodeids, Lake Kuroma and dwarf rainbowfish, a pyjama cardinal, blue-striped pipefish, yellow skunk clownfish and pink anemone fish), 1 snake (Aruba Island rattlesnake), 2 birds (Von der Deckens hornbill and ruff in breeding plumage) and 1 mammal (agile gibbon).Most were pretty straight forward and for the most part I needed to work from photo’s I had taken of the animals we had, as well as a few found in internet searches. When we have the animals on site, I can go back as frequently as I like to check the animal for details, colour etc. and when circumstances allow I will finish off a painting in front of the animal’s enclosure. However, during the summer months, it’s not practical for me to sit by the enclosures whilst I paint/draw, as I have to be aware of not blocking an exhibit from the public if the frontage was small. So that excluded the fish, invertebrates and snake. The hornbills were held off show out at the zoo’s land at Cribbs Causeway and as the birds were a bit flighty (being new arrivals) I couldn’t hang around long, so it was a case of pop in, take a series of photo’s in a relatively dark aviary without flash and leave. The result was pretty rubbish photo’s but I could get a good idea of shape and proportion from them. Also the two birds were juveniles and not yet in full adult plumage, so I needed to do a reference search in books and on the internet to find some adult pictures of the species. For the gibbon I was required to show the animal brachiating (swinging from branch to branch) in a horizontal format that measures approx 120mm x 70mm. Not much room for manoeuvre, you might say. Particularly when you see that when they brachiate they are in a vertical hanging position. Were I to depict the animal this way, the illustration would be far too small to be of any use on the sign. So I had to find another way to do it. In the end I found several pictures of a gibbon at the end of brachiating, about to land/reaching out for a tree trunk. These I was able to combine and adapt to fit the format I had to work with. The ghost mantis and one of the rainbowfish (dwarf species) gave me a few headaches as they are both quite small animals. Although I had taken photo’s, they were not much good for detail on the mantis or for colour on the rainbowfish, so I sat in the off show areas of the invertebrate and aquarium sections to finish the paintings I had started in the studio. I lost my patience a few times with the rainbowfish, with the painting nearly coming to grief, as thoughts of sending it up in a flash of fire or hurling it out of the window passed on more than one occasion through my head. The problem was trying to paint a one and a half inch fish whose pearly iridescence changed pattern and colours with every angle and movement from the live subject, as photographs just couldn’t pick up the correct or range of colouring. To top it off I just couldn’t recreate the neon blue stripe it had on the body along the line of the dorsal and anal fins, no matter how many blues, greens and other colours I mixed to match it! I had to put it aside on one day and ‘walk away’ as I knew my temper was about to snap with it! See… now this is what is meant by ‘artistic temperment’ and who ever said painting was a relaxing past-time!We have ruff in one of our free flight aviaries… again they were juvenile birds at the time I needed to paint them, when we first got them at the end of last year. The male and females looked pretty much the same through my camera lens and binoculars (couldn’t get anywhere near them to get decent look or photo’s) so I did the best I could with the help of other reference photo’s.. knowing that come May the males would start developing their spectacular breeding plumage, radically changing their appearance making them look like a separate species to the uninitiated. So I started researching the possible colour changes so that I could do one in full breeding regalia. Without too much effort I found a dozen photo’s showing all different colour combinations of the male ruff! The decision was made to wait until late Spring/early Summer this year to see how much our males changed and what colour combinations they would have.. and then I’d do the illustration from there based on them. Typically, just to make my job a little more interesting, our two males had different colour combinations and one didn’t seem to fully develop his ruff. This is the only species in the zoo where I have had to do two illustrations so that we can alternate according to the plumage morph of the bird. Apart from painting or drawing the pictures for the identification (ID) signs, several times a year I have to check all the animal ID signs and replace the faded and damaged ones – this can be just a handful to a couple of hundred, as was the case in October when I spent 3 weeks working solely on this. After walking round the grounds compiling my list, it was back to the studio to the computer to print out replacements and where necessary ‘build’ a new sign file. This involves typing in information, scanning and adding a picture and adapting a map to show range. Once I had them printed I then trimmed them to size, laminated them, re-trimmed to size, stuck double-sided tape on the back and then they were ready to be put up. I am currently painting a signal crayfish and after that I have a fly-river turtle to do. For the turtle I took some photo’s a month or so back when the animals were having a routine vet check. They are housed in one of the big landscape tanks of the aquarium and tend to reside at the bottom and at the back making photography impossible and visual study for an illustration very difficult. So a call from the reptile section at the time had me ‘hot-footing’ it to the aquarium to get a closer look and some photo’s done after the vets had done their check-ups.
To my regular readers, who must have thought I had expired or loss use of my typing hands, I apologise for the scant... nay... total abscence of any posts lately. I will try to bring you up to date in a few posts over the next week or so... which I hope you will enjoy reading..... if you are still popping back to see if my lazy post writing streak has ended, that is.
From an earlier post you will have read that one of my paintings got into this major exhibition in London. On Tuesday (Sept 25) I went with a friend, Emma, another wildlife artist. Must admit the coach is not my usual choice for travel to the capital, seen too many of them driving too fast and a little madly on the motorways for my liking. However the train fares were not in my favour on this occasion and being able to grab a ‘FunFare’ ticket with National Express meant I had a cheap return fare of just £7! Perfect for an artist on low funds.
From Victoria station we walked to the Mall Galleries, going past Buckingham Palace; where we stopped and took some ‘touristy’ pics of us outside the gates etc. Had to be done.The Private View opened at 2pm and we were inside the doors a minute or so after that. Walking down into the gallery we soon spotted a Gary Hodges drawing of snow leopards and … yup it had already sold £16,000 or thereabouts…. Just like that! Fantastic.
We ambled round in the increasing throng of artists, buyers and anyone else with an interest in wildlife and art. I had estimated that 2½ hours to do this would be ample time to see it all and get back to the coach station for our 5 o’clock coach home. There were over 400 framed works and sculptures on show and there were a lot of lovely and interesting pieces but as in any show there were also work there you wondered just how it got past selection.
The most stunning pieces for me were a couple of sculptures by Harriet Mead, a painting by Chris Rose of wood pigeons in a field and a hog deer by Vicky White. Harriet Mead’s sculptures are made from scrap metal and recycled mechanical parts but her attention to form and anatomy is superb. The sculptures looked as good on the inside as they did on the outside with structure following bone and muscle mass. I find Chris Rose’s work inspirational… the light and colours he gets into his work is incredible. In his painting, a boring old hayroll was made beautiful to look at with the cast of light and shadow and the colours used in his reflected lighting. But maybe the real showstopper for me was the hog deer. It was photorealistic. Now I know there are people out there who will scoff at that term… but this painting went far beyond just being photographic… it was alive! I swear as I stood there gazing at it in awe I saw its sides move as it breathed!!! I almost expected that any second soon it would, in one bound, be out of the canvas and running around the gallery causing havoc. She painted it so well with light, atmosphere and life - it is a truly fabulous piece of work.
Half way through our perusal of the show there was the official opening and award giving ceremony, which I had forgotten to take into account in my timings for the day. As was all the chatting with people you meet, either for the first time or have met before, after you have been round all the works. Consequently before we knew it we were running late and had to make a quick dash back down Pall Mall and Buckingham Palace Road to the station. Just in time to miss our coach!
According to our watch we were there 1 minute to 5 and the coach wasn’t there. After trying several very unhelpful staff at the station I was eventually guided to the National Express crew office, as there was no Nat Ex information desk in the station it seems; where I was told quite rudely that I should have been there at 10 minutes to 5, that no- the coach did NOT leave early (they never do) and our watch must be different to their computer system that the coaches run like clockwork by. Hmmmm. After having to buy another two tickets for us to get home (this time at £17.50 each) I checked our watch against the ‘systems’ time… our watch was 3 minutes faster, which meant we got there at 4 minutes to 5 by their system. So where was the coach if it left dead on 5!!!! Not even exhaust fumes were in the air when we got there. Not amused! To make the sting worse, the coach we came home on left 10 minutes late (as had the coach we came up on) with people getting on right up to that departure. And then for more salt in the wound, on the way home we got snarled up in not only rush hour traffic, but rush hour traffic snarled up and brought to a standstill by first an accident and then roadworks.
It’s got to be the train next time…. even if it costs more!
This event is held every year at Nature In Art, Glos.It’s a chance for some members to meet up, take part in organised workshops, listen to talks/presentations by professional artists or organisations connected with art or conservation and to generally have a good time.
This year it was held on the last weekend of the Annual exhibition. Originally, unfortunately, both events were due to take place in the week after the floods happened, so of course they had no choice but to postpone and re-arrange. Had the event not been postponed I would have been unable to submit anything for the Annual exhibition, but with the change in dates I could then put in two of the pieces that came back from NEWA (National Exhibition of Wildlife Art).I was to tutor a batik workshop for the members and give a talk. The workshop was scheduled on the Saturday, which meant it was a bit rushed for them as they had to see how the technique worked, practise it and then do a finished piece in one day. This is a lot to ask people new to batik to do on a two-day workshop let alone a one-day! But we had fun and they all produced remarkable pieces of work for the time they had to do it in.
On Sunday, I was to give my talk, for which I had done a PowerPoint presentation on my job at the zoo. This was my first foray into the realms of PowerPoint, and though it’s very easy to pick up, I had a lot of work to do because it was extremely image heavy, as would be expected of an artist. It therefore took me a few weeks to ‘build’, refine and readjust and when finished it was a whopping 475mb big!! That had to be reduced and whilst this is extremely easy and straightforward on a PC – for some reason which I can’t quite fathom, the Mac OSX system won’t allow for easy compression of the whole document. So I started redoing each image – resizing – recropping etc, one at a time. This was a mega time consuming job and I was getting to the stage where I could see I would only get this finished if I did no other preparations for the workshop etc, which was completely impractical. So I took it into work (zoo) and had it compressed on a PC in the Education dept… reducing it from its grand 475mb stature to a skinny 26mb in one easy step. Something to remember for next time!Prior to my talk there was to be a Critique given by Bas, who is a well-respected wildlife artist worldwide, he was Artist in Residence for that week. The idea of the Critique is for members to bring along a piece of work, which is hung in a ‘mini-exhibition’ with the members sat in audience as the chosen artist goes along and talks about each piece of work to the artist and group. He/she ideally picks up on what has worked well in each piece and suggests constructively what might be done to improve it, if anything at all.
I have sat through many of these in the past and had my work critiqued in this way… and whilst it may at first seem daunting it is actually quite invaluable to see you work through another’s eyes (especially a professional artist) and hear what is said… particularly the not so good comments. If you take the comments as they are meant – you can learn an awful lot. Of course, sometimes it’s hard to hear the comments, but if you want to improve and show your work on an increasingly professional level, then you must accept criticism be it the good or bad type, take what you need from it and go from there.
Before it took place Bas managed to persuade me to join him in doing the critique. I felt very honoured that he felt I was qualified enough to join him and I hope my input was as helpful as he said it was. It was another character building step and one that I am very glad to have done.
The weekend ended with the award/prize giving ceremony of both TWASI’s Annual Exhibition and the ‘Wildscape’ (UK’s only wildlife art magazine) Wildlife Artist of the Year Competition. I picked up Highly Commended in the TWASI Annual for my zebra foal pastel, which can be seen in my 'NEWA submissions' post in July.
For more information on Bas or The Wildlife Art Society see Links down the right handside of this page.
This is yet another pastel drawing of Chandra, one of my favourite subject animals, he's the male Asiatic lion at Bristol Zoo Gardens. This drawing is special though. Special from the point of view of for whom it was done.
I was commissioned to do this piece for Mike, who has been Chandra and Moti’s keeper since they first arrived at the zoo some 11 years ago. Mike has just retired and this was his leaving present from the staff; he also received a gold watch for over 30 years of devoted work at the zoo, especially with his greatest love… the big cats. Mike will be sadly missed; he was a great character and much loved by all. But I doubt our sadness at losing him barely touches the sense of loss he feels, now that he can no longer look after his beloved lions.
I finished this piece several weeks ago but obviously could not post it until after the presentation. I used Carbothello pastel pencils and a variety of stick pastels on an A3 pastel board. First, after tracing the drawing I spent a few days mulling over in an effort to get right, I put a thin gouache wash in a mid brown colour over the board. This was to 'knock back' the stark whiteness of the surface. I used the sticks to build up the deep smooth colours of the background first and then the pencils for the lion, where detail work was needed.
Being right-handed I worked left to right on the lion to avoid any mishaps with smudging by my hand. I had applied the background colours thickly, which gave a smooth velvet finish after much blending with my fingertips. This was easy to 'brush up' again at the end to ake away any residue dust from where I had worked on the lion.
Finally I put in some rough strokes to imply his usual bedding material of straw. I made no attempt to put Chandra into a natural background, as I wanted him to look as Mike knew him, without having the walls and features of his enclosure to distract the viewer.
Hedgerow – Gouache
Dawn over Netham - Oil 
Dawn over Netham - Oil 
