A new addition to the team

This week we welcomed a new member of staff to the Graphics Team; Louise has been employed as the graphic designer for Wild Place. Her first day was Monday and seems to be taking everything in her stride and settling in well in the team already.

Monday 13th
First job of the day was to respond to an email from the bird section. We no longer have brown breasted barbets in the collection so I went across to the lovebird aviary where they had been housed as well and removed the last of the ID signs for the barbet.

The panther chameleon that I finished last week needed to be checked and as Tim (Curator of Reptiles and Amphibians) wasn't in, I arranged to see Andy from the same Section. My coloration was incorrect..I had the chameleon too dull and green. We looked at my reference pictures and Andy deduced that at the time I took the photo's the animal was young and not fully matured into his more striking blue coloration that he now sported generally when calm and happy. We went to check the animal on display and Andy commented that his coloration was unusually dark.... not his normal self, so we went up to the off show area in the vet block to see another panther chameleon. His coloration was calm and quite blue... I took some more photo's and then headed back to the studio.

I altered the illustration fairly easily by carefully laying several translucent washes of blue and bluey green over the chameleon's body. This has to be done carefully so as not to lift the colour that has  already been painted. Then on top of that I dotted some more colour on to regain the skin texture and highlights. I added red also, a colour which was not present at all on the animal when I had initially taken the reference photos back last year.

Once done I went back to Andy and got the ok. The illustration was then scanned into the computer and placed on the ID sign, replacing the photo that was used until the illustration was done. The picture part of the sign was then printed, ready to laminate and take over to the section tomorrow.

Whilst out to-ing and fro-ing between the Reptile House I took a few photo's. The floral display outside the Reptile house has lost it's yellow of daffodils and now black tulips stand proudly in the sun. They looked like they were made of satin with that silvery sheen they had.

In the Reptile House the crocs were sat on the side of their pool where the female builds a nest and she was sat on top of a recently dug up mound. Maybe she's getting broody again.

One of the dinosaurs was being attacked... seems the jackdaws are plucking the feathering cover of Citipati, perhaps it is making good nesting material.

Tuesday 14th

When I came in this morning I looked at the printed picture of the panther chameleon and wasn't happy with it. So I reprinted it readjusting the colour at the same time, increasing the saturation and lowering the lightness. It came out much better.

On to the common chameleon.... I had 100 photo's of this chameleon on the computer... got some lovely sequences of movement in frame by frame motion. I had to go through each one to select the most useful and delete the ones that were too similar or slightly out of focus. This reduced the folder containing them from 500mb to just 148mb for 44 photo's! After thinking about the best pose for the illustration shape format, I selected a number of images to work from and arranging them onto an illustrator document to size and position onto an A4 sheet, I printed that and started the drawing.

This drawing spanned an A3 sketch pad sheet of paper, so to be able to trace the drawing across onto a piece of watercolour paper that would fit onto an A4 scanner, I needed to photocopy it to a slightly smaller size. Finally, before I headed home I cut a piece of watercolour paper to size ready to start painting on tomorrow.

Another picture, or two, from today... Kukena catching a ride with his Mum.

Wednesday 15th

Before I started painting the common chameleon I decided to check the coloration of the animal with Tim, as the photo's I had were also taken last year and I didn't want to have to alter another illustration. Chameleons are tricky things to illustrate as an identification image as they change their colour according to their mood or in response to one another. When I took the photo's of the common chameleon they were very green (not sexually dimorphic) but every time I see the one on show it is a pale sandy colour. Today when I popped up to check it's colour it was inbetween green and sandy. Talking to Andy from Reptiles, seems green is the 'normal' colour.. so we have a dilemma... do I paint it green or sandy coloured, either way it could look totally different to the animal. After discussions I'm going to paint it a greeny sandy colour part way between the two so that it's never too far off the animals colour as it changes.

I finished off the morning by painting a quick nondescript background for the chameleon.

After lunch it was my drawing afternoon... so I headed out and had a little wander. What was I to sketch today? I found myself up on the top terrace hoping to see the lion cubs out, they were but tucked right at the back up on the rocks. The drills were out so I settled down in front of them for about an hour and a half. These primates (related to Mandrills and baboons) are impressive looking animals and very active... always on the move, investigating this, investigating that. I struggled but kept at them. One did eventually sit for a while and looking up at one point I noticed he was nodding his head at me.... not just once but several times. I soon realised it was in response to me inadvertently nodding my head as I sketched him. I realised I was looking directly at him and then looking down to sketch a line or two before looking up again. I wondered if this was a friendly gesture or a threat one. I decided to be very careful and made sure I didn't 'nod' as I sketched, just in case. The last thing I wanted to do was upset the drill... that wouldn't be fair on him.

Whilst I was there Sarah, their keeper, came to give them a snack of fresh vegetables. I asked her about some of the behaviours I had seen, in particular the head nodding. It was indeed a threat gesture and she advised that if one of them started this and got agitated then it would be best if I walked away from the enclosure. You have to be so careful sometimes, something we think of as innocuous or don't even realise we are doing, can actually be very threatening to some animals. Luckily Donga or Rorke did not have any further adverse reactions to my movements as I sketched. They, in fact, came up close a number of times to sit near or look at me.

This is Rorke, what incredible facial structure drills have.

After sitting in front of the drills  for almost 2 hours was getting a little chilled (I had sat in the shade to cut the amount of reflections I could see on the glass of the drill enclosure) so I headed next to the Reptile House where it is a lovely toasty temperature.

Utila spiny tailed iguana

Did a few sketches there and then moved back out into the sun for the last half hour with the gorillas.

Whilst all eyes were on the gorillas, Salome was out and Kukena was being entertaining, when he wasn't hitching a ride on Mum. But almost hidden at the edge of the waterfall, just yards away, going unnoticed, there were more babies...