Finished drilling

My aim to finish the drill illustration today was successfully completed early in the afternoon. There was some last minute changes to the text and some adjustments to do in photoshop to the image before the sign could be printed out, laminated and then put up on the enclosure. The adjustments to the image were in the form of adding to the width of the image using the cloning tool to copy sections of the illustration and adding them to the either side. I had to do this because we have an A4 scanner; I had done the painting to fit onto A4 but as I wanted to do the monkey as large as possible it meant it would not be quite wide enough (image dimensions) to fit into the picture box on the ID computer file without having to add extensions. Also once done, the colours on the hind quarters were just not showing up when printed. So I used the 'magic wand' tool to select the areas I wanted on the digital file to increase the colour saturation. On the computer screen the colours were a bit overly flambouyant but on the printout they looked just fine.

For the last part of the day I started sorting out photo reference and fonts for the next species on my list.. kowari. This little marsupial is nocturnal, so I am at the moment very limited with photo's and seeing as I have just two weeks left at work before my two months off, I can't spend much time trying to get more/better shots. The animal is housed in the zoo's nocturnal house 'Twilight World', so catching them out in daylight is limited to less than 40mins in the morning before the lights go down and darkness takes over and even then they may actually only come out on view for about 5 mins (if at all) prior to the light 'switch-over'. 

Twilight World is divided into 4 sections - Desert, Forest, Underground, House. For the Desert area the ID's are presented as if someone has written some notes on a piece of paper and drawn a picture of the animal. The Head of the Learning Department, Simon, usually does the writing for these signs, which I then scan into the computer and place on the sign. However Simon is away on holiday at the moment so I spent some time this afternoon searching the fonts I have installed on my computer, looking for some nice 'handwritten' typefaces. I found about 6 which I have put examples of on the computer file ready for a decision to be made over which one to use. I then went through the photo's I have and picked out  about 6 to use as my reference for this wee beastie. 

With any luck I should be able to start and finish this illustration next week - for this format of sign I need only do a fine pencil drawing for this species... so hopefully it shouldn't take too long to do. 

Then before I leave for my 'two months working on my own art at home' time I need to do a sweep of all the zoo's ID signs to check for missing, damaged, faded ones that need replacing. I have seen a few in need of replacement but have put priority on getting the illustrations done first.