Goliaths

Onto a new illustration today... the goliath stick insect (Eurycnema goliath). This bright green beastie is a monster.... the second largest stick insect in the world with the females growing as long as 20cms. The Titan stick insect of Australia is bigger, but is not as heavy or sturdy as the goliath.

I had taken photos of the zoo animals of this species some months ago, so I spent the morning looking through these photo's picking out the ones that I could use and printing them onto A4 sheets of paper. I had managed to get some good reference shots; in particular I had taken a photo of a female and then before she moved I then took a further dozen or so photos zooming in closer so that I got just a leg, foot or head. This will help me get the detailing on the joints right.

Also this morning the Dave, Education Section, asked me what text requests were outstanding. The Education Officers write the text that goes on each ID sign. I get the info from the animal section and then when I need the text doing I send this onto the Education team, which they then convert into a passage of interesting text. Although I have a list of 10 ID requests.. only 4 need text. Once I had sent all the relevant info to Dave I got back to the stick insect.

Just before lunch I was able to start the drawing of the female goliath stick insect. I have to choose the position of the insect carefully  so that it fits into the set oblong picture box on the ID sign. A long insect with long legs can quickly become just a tiny image within the box if the positioning is not thought out properly. The animal stance needs to be oblong.. if it becomes too square (i.e. legs go more vertical than horizontal) then the size of the beastie has to be made smaller for the legs to fit in. So as I was drawing my stick insect I altered a few of the legs from the reference photos so that they would fit into the oblong format.

I finished the drawing by late afternoon and my eyes were feeling tired from the concentration. So I took the opportunity to pop up to Bug World to see the live stick insects on display. I had only a few bad photos of the male and female together - there is a marked size difference so to get the comparative sizes right I hoped I could get some better photos this afternoon. Armed with the departments camera I went out into the glorious sunshine and across to Bug World.

As it was I could only see one male in with several females and sod's law... he was nowhere near any of them! So bang went that idea. I did a quick perusal through the whole house checking for IDs that might need replacing or new species being on show with temporary or no sign at all. Pleased to see all was well and in order. So I popped into the Aquarium which was close by.

I was delighted to see that the three new bichir fish (recent aquisitions) were all out swimming in plain sight! Why should this excite me so? Prior to their arrival, I had only ever seen the zoo's one other bichir once or twice in the 16 years I have been there and the ID illustration is badly in need or redoing; so to now see three at once, was like Christmas! I took loads of photo's... mainly because the tank these fish are in is one of the 'landscape' tanks.. these are big tanks (about 12-15 feet wide across the front, about 5-6 feet deep and about 6-7 feet front to back). The floor level of the tank sits about 2 feet below the floor level of the public viewing area and the light level at the bottom is very low, add water distortion andt a ground loving fish between 1 and 2 foot long in there and you can start to get an idea of how it was not easy getting any decent shots. Still... it was vastly better than anything I had got before.. which was just one or two extremely poor images.


On my way back to the studio I couldn't resist these two piccies...

Guess who?!

A fearsome T-Rex sizing me up for a quick snack!