Artist in Residence

Last week I was an artist in Residence at the Nature In Art Museum and Art Gallery in Gloucester. I have been lucky to be able to be part of their Artist in Residence programme every year since 2000 (with the exception of one year). Each week from February to November they have an artist or artists set up in their studio space to spend the week (Tuesday to Sunday) working so that visitors can see an artist producing their creations- whether that is sculpture, paintings, print-making, drawing or any number of other skills.

It is a long time since I have shown any of my zoo artwork as part of my display simply because I have shared the studio space with another artist and therefore have had to limit what I can show as the studio space is not that big.

This year I was flying solo again, the first time in many years, as I felt it was time to show my zoo work again and as I wanted  space to show my Botswana project work too. Too much stuff to fit into a shared space.
So here are a few photo's showing my zoo display. For more photo's of the whole display in the studio please click here.

On the table I had a selection of sketches, a portfolio of examples of my illustrations, a book showing examples of other work I do such as murals and a photo of Distinctly Different (Dee Dee) the gorilla sculpture I painted.

In a handy glass cabinet I put some original illustrations on show; one, the Kowari, also had a copy of the finished ID sign next to it so it could be seen as a 'before and after' example. 

On the wall I put up another couple of examples of finished ID signs, a couple of posts from this blog and a description of my job at the zoo.

If I am there again next year, and solo, I will add more to the display.

Sadly my time at home is nearly at an end and I will be back at the zoo to work from Nov 5th. I had so many plans to do to this blog during my two months off, but my preparations for a couple of workshops and the week at Nature In Art took up nearly all of my time; but the plans aren't forgotten I will add them as and when I can.

Off for two months leave

It was rather poignant that my last post was titled Butts End, seeing as I am now away from the zoo for a couple of months. I didn't think about that at the time, but maybe that was my subconscious working...

Yup.... am now on leave for the month's of September and October. This is part of my part-time package in that I work at the zoo (3 days a week) for 9 months in each year. Up until this year those 3 months were taken back to back from January - March. But this year we are splitting the time up to see if that works better for both myself and the zoo. So January was my first month off and I started this blog when I returned to work in the February. The idea behind this is so that I can concentrate properly for the those 3 months on my work as a self employed wildlife artist (as opposed to an illustrator).  Posts about what I do in that line of work are on my other blog www.susanjanelees.blogspot.com

During my time off I shall be doing a week's residency at the Nature In Art Museum and Art Gallery in Gloucestershire and this year I shall be showing a selection of my work at the zoo incorporating originals, signs and books showing many of my illustrations over the years.. of which there are over 560 species. This residency is from 9th - 14th October. If you are close enough, please do pop in to say hello and have a chat. The Museum is a fabulous place to visit with a stunning collection of art inspired by nature from sculpture, paintings and prints to ceramics, furniture and mosaics. www.nature-in-art.org.uk

During these next two months, I shall also endeavour to pop in one or two illustrations of work I have done in the past and maybe add a few new items to the blog such as pages to view illustrations more easily ... so keep checking back. :~)

Butts end

Decided to come back into work at the zoo today to finish the lion board. There's not much left to do and I know Anna will be busy next week as she will be on her own in the studio, so I didn't want her to worry about having to get the lion finished for me.

Here's me working on the board, tidying up a few lines and adding a second coat to the pale body colour it wasn't dark enough to hide the pencil marks underneath of the traced line of the original lion (which I altered a bit).

Here's the original lion board with the very rotten hole where the small nozzle was. The board has rotten a lot around the small aperture to the point that a child's head could almost be put through it. We are not sure who painted the original board but I think it was probably a great guy called Al, who worked at the zoo for a great many years in the Graphics Dept. He did a lot of the fun stuff decorating cut outs of animal shape and things for various uses around the zoo like the Activity Centre, Zoolympics and puzzles and pictures for the zoo magazine.  

It's a shame his lion has suffered, but it gave a good number of years service and I hope mine will do the same.

So here he is finished....

Everything Butt

The studio was overwhelmingly fumey this morning when I unlocked the door. I was hit with a wave of  gloss paint smell... not one I'm adverse to, but maybe not quite at that strength!! All windows were duly flung open in a bid to ventilate the room quickly.

Looking at my progress I was disappointed to see a few runs in the paint. Because of my shoulder and its limited movement, aches and pains I chose to work with the board standing on the floor leaning against my drawing desk rather than placing it flat on a table or the ground. The latter would indeed get rid of the paint's tendency to run but I would have found it very difficult to work on.

So, just plod ahead and adapt where necessary... I don't really like working to someone else's design... I know for this it needs to be more child-like than correct anatomically so again I need to try and dispense with what I would do and try to work within the design I have been given. I have adapted it a bit but  can't do too much other-wise it wouldn't fit the board shape.

By lunchtime I had got this far and needed to wait a bit for the paint to dry off a little before I continued.

Cracked on with the lion during the afternoon and this is how far I have got....

Butt, butt, butt...

This morning I put up the new signs in the Forest of Birds exhibit that I had put together last week. I got them up before the zoo got too busy with visitors. It is the last week of the Summer Holidays and with school starting up again next week it seems there is a last rush to get out and about by families.

I love going in the Forest of Birds.. not only is it invariably toasty in there but it's like a treasure trove. At first glance it just appears to be greenhouse of plants, but then you start noticing the birds hidden amongst leaves and on branches. Java sparrows, white-rumped shama, roul rouls, turaco's, hooded pitta, bleeding heart doves, Nicobar pigeon's and the splendid ornately headed Victoria crown pigeon's just some of the species in there. How many times have I been in there when people wandered in and said... "there's nothing in here" and wander back out, when I can see at least a dozen or so individual birds around them. Sometimes I have stopped them and pointed a few birds that are close by, surprised, they then start looking for themselves and often then end up spending some time there finding birds with a noticeable sense of satisfaction. That makes my day when that happens... seeing people look and appreciate with new eyes.

Back in the studio I traced the lion tracing onto the new board and mixing one of the greens with a bit of the yellow I started painting the foliage area on the board. I shall leave the lion until after I have done most of the foliage as then I can avoid having to carefully paint around things and paint over instead.

During the afternoon I had a visitor to the zoo, Dr Kate Evans an elephant conservation researcher with whom I am doing an exhibition project. She had dropped some leaflets of her charity 'Elephants For Africa' off to me and I took her on a little walk around the zoo before she had to leave for another appointment.

Tomorrow is my last day at the zoo for a couple of months... I am hoping I can get quite a bit done on the lion. If I don't finish it, then Anna will take over and finish it off next week or the week after.

Clean sweep

First thing this morning I put tape on the laminated IDs and went out for an hour and half to put them up and restick all the signs I had noted were loose.

Back in the studio I photocopied 30 guides for the butterfly house and got them all laminated before delivering them to the Butterfly Forest display. I took away the old, crumpled and rather worn out looking few that were left from the batch that had been in there for a month or two.

Before lunch Lynsey popped over to the studio to check the kowari picture and gave it the ok. So now all I have to do is print that out after lunch, laminate it and get it up on show in Twilight World.

I have 8 bird IDs left to get laminated - I had left these until last as they also need to be hole-punched for the "book" displays they are used for.

The afternoon started with me finishing off and getting the kowari up on display. I had to fiddle with the image in Photoshop before getting the sign printed, as the background of the drawing was not quite white enough and lightening it in balance levels bleached out the finer lines of the drawing. So with the brush tool set on a soft setting I cleaned up the surrounding area.

Once the kowari sign was up I then started looking at my next project. Painting a lion's rear end!

One of the favourite things around the lion enclosure for kids is the spraying lion. A wooden board painted with the rear end of a lion, was inset with a spray nozzle, which had a pipe to a water supply and by pressing a button water sprayed out of the 'lion' just under the tail. It was well used by the children, who loved the idea of a lion spraying but also just the fact that children and playing with water are a natural mix. Sadly the well loved 'toy' started to suffer and the wood around the nozzle got very rotten. So a new board has been cut in the same shape as the old one and my job is now to paint a replica lion rear end.

I traced the basic outline of the previous painted lion as a guide and then set about searching for reference of a lion's rear end.... I had to word the google search request carefully as I got some very dubious websites to start with!! As you can imagine there are many many images of lions on the internet... surprisingly few, though, of the rear end of one! I eventually found just 5 that would be useful.

A trip to the Maintenance Dept was made so that I could look through their paint store, but after a short look it was decided that it would be better just for me to order new tins. I was given a Dulux paint chart swatch and a quick look through ended with me requesting 5 tins... 2 greens, two browns and a yellow colour which should be delivered tomorrow. Which means I can start painting next week... but not Monday.. that's a Bank Holiday here in the UK so I will not be in work.

Kowari and Sweep

It took me just about half an hour to finish off the kowari this morning... making sure I had remembered to put in its whiskers, of course! So this is the finished drawing....

The grades of pencil I used continued to be 4H, H, F and 7B.. using the 7B only for the black of the eyes and tail. Also on the tail I added some work in with a 9B and took out some 'harsh' details on the fur of the body. The drawing has yet to be checked by the animal section but I have set up the digital file for the ID sign so that once I get that check done, if the verdict is all ok then I can print out the ID straight away. But if I need to do any tweeks, I will have to re-scan the pic and place it on the file. this is what the final sign should look like (without the watermark)... 

The font I used for the text is one called "Sean's other hand", as it closely resembles the text on other ID's in the Desert area of Twilight World, where the text was hand-written by a member of staff (before being scanned digitally and placed on the signs) who is away on holiday at the moment.  

Before lunch I had about 40 mins to go out into the zoo and start my 'Sweep' of IDs to see which need replacing, cleaned, re-sticking etc. Because I was away for about a month recently I had a lot to catch up on when I got back, so my bi-monthly "sweep" got delayed as a result. It was very busy and in some areas I struggled to move easily through the crowds. I managed to get about half way around the site and came back with a relatively small list of stuff to do.

After lunch I continued on my "sweep'. Whilst I go around I also clean up some signs that are cobwebby or have become dirty. Surprisingly there wasn't too much to sort out and once back in the studio I started on the computer, printing out the ID signs needed. I had two already on file that I could use so that left me with only 16 IDs to print - 15 for birds and 1 for mammals.

By the end of the day all were printed out and most laminated.