Illustrations of Lionhead cichlid and Antilles pink-toed spider

This morning after trimming and laminating the two ID signs for Horse-headed grasshopper and the European lobster I took them over to Bug World and put them up.  Before I headed back to the studio I  popped into the Aquarium to see if the bristle-nose catfish was out and visible; which, of course, he wasn't! I did a quick check of tank residents to see if Jonny (Assistant Curator Aquarium) had snuck any new species in 'under my radar'. I noticed one fish that I think might need to be added to my list. Whilst there I counted the number of species whose ID was on paper and not film in the lightboxes. There are now 18 species with 'temporary' paper ID's, so as the proposed big change over to larger lightboxes and ID's has yet to be put into action, it was decided that we now need to go ahead and get these done on film.

Coming  out of the Aquarium I walked down past the huge T-Rex that stands poised ready to attack in the rockery garden! He is life-size and is very impressive. I have yet to see this one move or make a sound, but hopefully I will catch this next week when the 'DinoZoo' will be officially open, so all 12 of the dinosaurs we have will be up and running by this weekend.

I walked past an aviary with the black-cheeked lovebirds and black collared barbets. I wanted to check the birds head colour. When I did their illustration  last year the birds were young and their full adult plumage wasn't thought to be fully through. So I was doing a quick check to make sure that nothing had changed from the illustration. All looked good and I found myself lingering for a few more minutes just watching them mutually grooming each other. The red on their cheeks shone vibrant bright red and looked stunning in the sunlight.

Back in the studio I put the lionhead cichlid illustration image onto the ID file, which now awaits the bristle-nose to be complete.  

Then I started inputting the information I had so far for the Antilles pink toed spider onto a new ID file, and after receiving further information for this species from Mark I forwarded this onto the Education Dept for it to be turned into a body of text to go on the ID sign.

As my next job is the bristle-nose catfish I did a reference search on the internet for images and sent some of these to Jonny to be checked to see if they related to the sub species we have in the zoo, as some there were great variations in the dot patterns, length of bristles and  a few differences in colour. 

After lunch I started on the drawing of the bristle-nose, which went smoothly and so was done nice and quick. I painted a piece of 300grm watercolour paper with a mix of black paint that I make  from lamp black, alizarin crimson and  ultramarine. Whilst this was drying I nipped across to the Aquarium to list the species that have temporary IDs, noting in which tank they were. 

The afternoon has turned out beautiful with strong sun blasting down. I went back to the studio past the lake and the gibbons. They were out high up on their huge framework sat watching something across the zoo.

Back in the studio I went through the Aquarium folders on the computer noting which file has the species I put on my list. This is so that Anna can access them quickly and easily when she needs to get the files ready to be sent to the printer.

As I was doing this I got an email from Kate on the Bird Section asking for a couple of blanks to be put up where two bird ID's  had been taken down because the birds have been moved off show. So the last job of the day was to pop out to the aviary (which thankfully was close by) and put those up in the spaces left by the missing ID's.