Ooops, missed Wednesday and it's already Monday!

Not quite got back into the swing of posting a blog after each day I work at the zoo, so I will try and catch up today.

Wednesday last week was pretty much quiet job-wise. After spending a goodly portion of the morning on the computer typing wordy stuff I spent a good portion of the afternoon in a Guest Service Training session arranged which all members of staff have attended over the past week. This ties in with the Guest Charter the zoo has recently implemented. After that I had a look at the photos of the squid mural and started mapping out the rejoining of the tentacles and thinking about the practicalities of getting the job done.

Before the building work

After the building work

Monday 11th

This morning has been all about the squid. I have been up to Bug World to measure the line of the old wall to get the length of the body for the squid as the mural has been brought forward into the room and making the body quite a bit shorter.  I will need to extend the body back, which is really a complete repaint of said body. I have been talking to the Maintenance Dept regarding a scaffold platform being made available and looking at paints and trying to match colours using a book of swatches. 

Body before building work

Body after the building work

This afternoon I popped over to the Forest of Birds aviary to add a sign that got left off one of the ID displays when I replaced a few of them last week. The birds in the warm aviary house were active and noisy with various melodic calls and songs filling the air. And sadly, as is usual, a high proportion of the people who walk in go through without stopping and really seeing all that there is in there; so many little treasures of feathers. They leave muttering that there was nothing to see when there are at least 18 species and numerous individuals all around them.

It's now quite busy with people outside, being half term the number of visitors has gone up this week, despite the drizzly grey cold weather which is good to see. 

Back with the squid; I settled on my colour choices for the mural and wall and sent my order to Maintenance. In Bug World I used a piece  of string, cut to the length of the squid body, and marked where it would go round the walls back from the new head position. I also traced the tail fluke to save time drawing it on the wall later. More discussions with Benn from the Estates Dept, Mark from Bug World and Eddie from Maintenance regarding what needs still to be done to the walls and tanks to finish that side of the job off before I can start my work on the actual mural.

Hoping the paints will be delivered tomorrow so I can get the work underway. The builders said they hoped to be finished sometime in the morning, if all goes well, I should be able to start drawing up the alterations after that and maybe even slap some paint on. 

Making Signs

After last night's lashing of wind and rain the zoo is bathed in beautiful clear sunshine today. But I can't go out and enjoy that yet.. I have the signs to put together. The 21 ID signs that I printed yesterday now need to be made ready to go on show. For display both inside and out the preparation is pretty much the same. Once each paper sign is trimmed to the size required I then encapsulate it in plastic laminate.

We use two thicknesses of laminate, we usefully decribe to ourselves as Thick and Thin. The thicker is basically double the layer of laminate on both sides of the 'sleeve'; outdoor, long term and high 'use' signs get this laminate, which actually covers most signs. Many years ago the Graphics Dept invested in a good quality laminator and this has stood the test of time and use, over and over again, out lasting numerous cheaper models used by other departments.  I have hopes that one day we get to replace the method of using laminate, as it doesn't sit well with me being a relatively high use of plastic.

Once laminated the sign is then trimmed to size again, leaving a small border of laminate. Then certain signs need double sided sticky tape put on the back and once done they are good to go and I can take another little walk around the zoo to replace them with the old, damaged, missing or faded signs.

Some signs are more involved than others, such as the ones we have for the tropical bird house called The Forest of Birds.  The ID signs are presented in a book form and ID's are sandwiched in laminate back to back so that they form the 'pages' of the book. When I laminate these signs I have to leave a border of about 3cms on one side, holes are punched into this border and metal eyelets are hammered into place over these holes to stop them ripping. The sign is then threaded onto the two U-bolts  standing proud on a backing board and the book is done. Today I had 8 of these 'pages' to put together.

I finished all my cutting trimming and banging holes and eyelets in by lunchtime, so this afternoon I can  put them all up.

All signs were put up with no problems, even the Forest of Bird IDs were installed without the usual hassle of awkward nuts not going back onto the U bolts properly. Whilst out I took photo's of the giant squid mural.... there's a slight hitch in the way it has been put  back together, nothing can be done now, it just means there's a lot more work involved in patching it up than was planned.

Whilst I was in the Reptile House I couldn't resist taking this photo.....

Life imitating art, eh?

Back at the Zoo

Today is my first day back since just prior to Christmas, so I spent this morning walking around the zoo checking all the identification signs and noting those that need replacing. At the same time I gave those that needed a quick clean a bit of a wipe over.

In the South American tapir paddock there is a set of four signs and I used to be able to climb up over the sturdy fence to get in to attend these sign, but these days my limbs can't quite manage the climb back out as there are no handy foot holds. So I found a keeper and waited whilst she finished sorting out the golden lion tamarins before unlocking the paddock to allow me access to the signs.
The advantage of climbing over the fence used to mean that on a day such as today I wouldn't have to wade through several inches of gooey mud, but as my older limbs aren't as agile as they used to be I now wade through the mud to get to the signs. Once cleaned I negotiated the mire again and locked the padlock on my way out. Good job I always wear walking boots to work.

On my walk around I get re-aquainted with the zoo and some of the staff I see. I had  a couple of lovely catch-up chats with staff that I knew and I met a volunteer called Pat who has been here for nearly four years each Monday, but I have never bumped into her before. We had a nice chat in the tropical bird house where she was stationed.

There is some work going on around the grounds on various exhibits - there's a bit of a revamp going on in Bug World which involves my giant squid mural; so I will need to do some work on that very soon to patch it up after the builders have finished. The gibbon island climbing frame is also having some structural work done.

By lunch time I had finished my 'sweep' and so the next job is to print out and replace those ID signs that I made notes of. So the afternoon was spent in front of the computer printing 21 new ID's finishing just before it was time to go home.

As it was my first day back at work since before Christmas I had my Secret Santa Christmas present waiting for me and a note saying 'Welcome Back Su' on my desk, which was lovely to come back to.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year greetings. For those of you who have been following this blog I'd like to thank you for taking your time to read my posts and I have much appreciated the kind comments you have sent me. I hope my jottings will continue to be of interest and hope that you will come back again and again to see what I've been up to.
I am now on leave as part of my part-time work arrangements, I shall be away from the zoo until the beginning of February, so although there will be no 'working posts' three times a week.. I shall endeavour to post something of work I have done in previous years to fill the 'void'.

In the meantime I hope you had a fabulous Christmas and New Year and hope 2013 will be a good one for us all.

Spiny starfish

Apologies if you have been  following this blog and wondered where my posts have been for the last couple of weeks. I was working at the zoo but sorry to say I actually never got round to putting a post up.

I had been working on the spiny starfish illustration (Marthasterias glacialis).

The reference pictures I had were mainly from the internet; as despite numerous visits to the underwater area of Seal and Penguin where their tank is situated, I could never time it when the starfish were out in good view... they were always hidden down amongst the rocks in their tank.

So I decided to base the position of the starfish on the image in the top right of the ref pictures. 

Despite the starfish hiding from me I knew that their colouring was different to any of the starfish on my ref pictures... there is a lot of variation, but I wanted the illustration to relate to our animals more... so I popped back down after I had drawn the basic shape to get a long look at the animals. Typically one was out in full view... and I didn't have the camera!! So after dashing back to the studio to grab the camera I managed to get a few shots of the starfish before it disappeared back down into the crevices between the rocks.

These would be no good for positioning and the drawing I had done would fit nicely into the box shape available for the illustration on the ID format for fish, so there's no need to change that. But these would be good for details such as the placement and spacing of the nodules on its arms and the colouration.

The illustration itself was done over two days... this is the finished illustration before I corrected the black background to 'pure' black on the computer.

The matt black I paint as the background when scanned in never comes out as 'pure' black so I have to alter this in Photoshop before adding to the ID document. Although this particular fish display does not have a lightbox to display the ID sign I correct the black just in case in the future it is moved to a tank that does have a lightbox. If I did not change the black to '100% black' it would show up greyish on the lightbox and we want the illustration background to join seamlessly with the black of the rest of the ID sign. 

To do this I first choose the brush tool and set the size of the brush to a large diameter to cover a large area of the image in one stroke. I then use the magic wand to select the background and then invert this so that when I brush over the image it will only affect the background area. I then choose a bright colour (in this case red) and brush over the illustration until all of the background is covered.  Then I change the brush size to a much smaller diameter and change the colour of the brush stroke to 100% black. I then cover the red area in close to the starfish. I get as close as I can but not right up to the edge of the painting. 

So the image then looks like the above. Next I change the brush size to an even smaller diameter and zoom right in on the image.

I change the softness of the brush stroke edge from 100% hard to around 50% had so that the colour left by the brush stroke fades out slightly. By doing this I soften the effect on the illustration and it doesn't look 'cut out' of harsh. I take the brush strokes right up to the edge of the painting and in this case it took a long time because of all the fiddly little spines on the bottom of each arm. Until it looks like the pic below all the way around the painting. 

I take this opportunity to 'tidy' up any overlaps or bits of the painting that I don't really want there. 

The illustration just needs one final 'tweek'... I adjust the colour that was slightly lost in the scanning process.

Giant Squid

Yesterday afternoon I received some extra text documents from the Education Section; these came from two new staff editions, Dan and Ben, who had been given  the task of producing text for two bird IDs that currently have no text. this was a great idea as it not only gave them the experience/practise of doing text for ID signs but also filled a couple of gaps on Bird IDs. So this morning I transferred the text to the ID documents and later in the morning I was able to replace the two species IDs with new ones with some lovely new text.

Before lunch I popped up to Bug World to take some photo's of the giant squid mural. This is so that I have a record of what has been painted just in case during the renovations the panels on which it is painted are damaged and not re-useable. If I have to repaint the whole body and front part of tentacles I may be able to project the image and trace around saving me a lot of time and hard work trying to redraw it again.

This mural is based on the size of the largest known specimen and measures over 100 feet from tail tip to end of the two main tentacles. This creature also has the world's largest eye of any creature.. amazing isn't it.. that it is an invertebrate that has the biggest eye on the planet!

After taking a number of photo's of the area of the mural that will be affected, as well as getting a few detail shots of shading effects etc, I wandered from the marine area into the arid area. A new beetle has arrived.

This is the Indian six spot beetle  - Anthia sexguttata and measures 4 cms long (1.5 inches) a carnivorous beetle from Asia. Carmen, from the Ectotherm section, was watching them so when I was unable to get any good reference shots through the window she was able to take me around into the keeper area and get one of the beetles out under a good light source for me to photo closely. I had to wear eye protection goggles as if they get annoyed or upset they can squirt a nasty liquid. I was careful to not get too close and to keep my movements slow and easy so not to make it feel threatened at all. It sat very nicely on the 'log' Carmen had taken out of its enclosure whilst I took some photo's.

After lunch I met up with Eddie from Maintenance again to continue with the Christmas Animal Shape Lights. There isn't a lot we can now do to the lights that need struts repositioned or altered before Christmas so they will have to be sorted out after and made ready for next Christmas. Eddie got the last of the cable tie-ing done on the penguins and the alterations to the elephant and giraffes can hopefully be done next week after the electrician has finished doing the work he needs to do on them.

So back to the studio to sort out the photo's I took this morning of the giant squid. I upload them to the computer and them weedle out the ones I don't need or want. Then open them in Photoshop and save. Then I looked to my illustrations 'to do' board to see what species was next. Another fish.. the short-snouted seahorse - Hippocampus hippocampus. I had a few photo's I had taken previously of this species but again like the pipefish they weren't great. So I turned to an internet search and pulled a few images that may be useful. These again were opened and saved through Photoshop and filed in a folder. Then I studied the collection of images in this folder picking out the ones that would serve me best as reference. These were then placed onto an Illustrator file to print out. I found a file I had made previously of ref images for the spiny starfish - Marthasterias glacialis so printed that out too, as I then thought with the time hastening towards Christmas and my last day at work being the 18th, the starfish might be quicker to get done.

Lastly before the end of the day I mixed up some black and painted a piece of 300grm watercolour paper ready for the illustration.

I have tomorrow off to work at home on the gorilla commission that I will soon do a post about on my other blog.

Checked out

Missed Wednesday's post last week - got the pipefish painting checked by Sam from the Aquarium and  he picked up on the tail section. I had found it very hard to get any reference either from the live animal or from any photo's that I took myself or found on the internet. Sam pointed out that the fish was more sectioned and square rather than round as I had done it. So I looked again at the live animals trying to work out what was happening. It has differing 'planes' to its body that change as it passes the dorsal fin. So I tried again, and again.. finally think I got it on the fourth try at the tail from the dorsal fin back.

So took it back to the Aquarium today for Jonny to see and check. Thankfully I had managed to get it right this time...

Scanned it to the computer and blacked out the background in Photoshop and then dropped the finished picture document into the ID document and printed, then laminated and trimmed it and put it up next to the tank the fish are in in the underwater area of the Seal and Penguin Coasts exhibit. This is how the illustration looks like as the ID sign.

I also managed to get the red-bellied lemur illustration checked and ok'd and also printed off three copies of that ID - one to put up now and two more to go up in the Lemur Walkway when it reopens for the school half term at the beginning of February. 

Emily from the Mammal Section checked the illustration for me whilst we stood by the indoor area of the ring-tailed lemurs. The young ring-tail, a female called Dizzy, was bouncing around the wooden poles and other adults like a looney. Her name certainly suits. I recalled how, a few months ago, I watched her pogo-ing the distance of several feet between two adults (one of whom was her Mother) during her early forays and adventures off her Mum.  

I also had a meeting today with Ben who works with Projects. They are planning some alterations in Bug World and this means moving interior walls to accommodate new tanks and make the keeper's areas bigger for better husbandry and access. Unfortunately in the area there is to be a lot of work one of my life size murals will be affected. The giant squid covers the walls and in some parts the ceiling so there will be a lot of repainting of said squid... if we keep it. So the meeting was to discuss what was involved and any other ideas.