Common, common, common chameleon

Do you like the title? I wonder if you picked up the nod to a song by Boy George? The Education Dept had put a play on the words in the text that is on the ID sign and  I couldn't resist doing something similar, because it just screams to be done, doesn't it :)

Another short week... with a Bank Holiday on Monday, I was in just on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday 28th
Here is where I had got to last week with the common chameleon.

I had got a base coat of rough colour on the body ready to start detailing this week.

But first thing that greeted us this morning in the kitchen was this delicious looking display of cakes.

The cupcakes are homemade by one of the ladies in Education Dept, who had a birthday at the weekend. We have this lovely 'tradition' that when it is your birthday you bring in goodies for everyone to share. And today there are two birthday's worth of goodies. Needless to say.. the cakes, disappeared rapidly... and they were very yummy.

So Back to the chameleon...

I worked on the painting all day, with just a couple of breaks for a few other little jobs, giving convenient 'eye-breaks'. I am adding the texture of the chameleon by dotting the colour on and started with the head and moved back across the body from right to left.

As for the other little jobs... I had a couple of email requests to print some extra ID signs... one was for the Goeldi's monkeys (the expanding group have been split up and a sign was needed for the second group's new home). The second was for a scientific name change on the lesser goliath beetles. Got both printed, laminated and delivered to section or put up on display before the end of the day.

Another little job was to remove some gorilla interpretation signage and props from the portacabin by the Education Centre. It had been used as a store whilst the gorilla house gets it make-over for all the 'set dressing' items and signage. Now the room was needed for teaching sessions so had to be cleared out. Louise and I took out a few items that were the responsibility of the Graphics section, one included the life size wooden panel cut out of a gorilla standing upright with the arms outstretched. The arms of a male gorilla are as long as they are tall and so it was quite a thing to manoeuvre through doors and up stairways that had right angle turns in them. Got it to the Prep Room and had to leave it obstructing a cupboard.. there was no where to put it where the arms wouldn't be sticking out to clobber unsuspecting passerbys or where it wasn't obstructing something. I think we're going to have to do some reshuffling of stuff in our storage areas to get it somewhere safe and out of the way.

Lastly at the end of the day I started planning out how I would do the chart for the ID request submissions. This was something discussed in my half yearly appraisal... I had collated all the info I had on dates of when ID requests were received and when the illustration got done. Once we have got this going properly I can then better assess my work load.

Wednesday 29th

Continued working on the chameleon today, had hoped to finish it but needed frequent breaks for my eyes as doing all the dots was a little hard on the eyes. I'm quite happy with it so far...I am trying to get a colour that is mid way between when I have seen the chameleon looking really green and when I have seen it looking almost sandy coloured. 

So by the end of the day this was where I was at with it... just the tail left to do next week.

I started the day off though by continuing with the chart for the ID requests... think I've come up with a chart that will work.

Each animal section has its own colour, so I can see when say invert or bird ID requests come in... putting the species name and date received under the appropriate month, I also mark in when the illustration was done. At the moment the information is not quite reading well as there are numerous illustrations that I have done where I do not have a date of when the request came in. So already this chart is showing me I have to be more aware of that, to keep better records. 

Here are some photo's that I took in the zoo this week, on the few occasions I got to go out into the grounds.

This is Satan... a velvet swimming crab in Bug World, he's a bit of a bullish character in his tank, but he's very handsomely marked. On his legs he has shiny stripes of purple blue.. looks like he's wearing very natty pyjama's.

Then I went into the Aquarium, always good to wander through and see if Jonny has sneaked any new fish in...sometimes I spot a new arrival, but this week if there were any new additions, I didn't see them. 

But the red-bellied piranha - Pygocentrus nattereri caught my eye.. Jonny has set up a lovely tank for them.. looks very dramatic and shows the fish off beautifully.

The scales of these piranha always fascinate me. They look like they have gold flecks embedded into their skin... when the light catches these flecks, they sparkle. Jewels from the Amazon.

But they don't have a smooth skin surface... it's scales and if you look closely they are not uniformly laid out along the body... in places the scales get quite higgledly piggley... and some of them are shiny, whilst most are not. But look at the colours, in even the dark area of their body.

And then.. one of my favourite fish (of which I admit there are quite a few candidates)...

The Dragonfish...or Asian arowana - Scleropages formosus. Sadly, not a great photo of one.. but they had just been fed and so were moving about quite actively, making it tricky in a large tank with low lighting to get a decent shot.