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.