Diary of a zoo illustrator: Catch up!

Hmmm... two weeks since my last post! Tut tut! So here's a quick recap of those two weeks...

Monday 1st July

The morning started off with me continuing with the blue spiny lizard - Sceloporus serrifer cyanogenys. But then I had to stop as some ID work needed to be done. Anna has been busy revising the size and font for the Bug World ID's, making the ID sign bigger and replacing the text font to something more clearer to read, but still with the handwritten feel about it. In the process some of the ID's that previously had a lot of text had to have the wording thinned down and one of these was the imperial scorpion. I realised that I would now need to change the text on the Twilight World version for this species, so that the text was the same on both ID's. As yet the lighting for the backlit sign has not yet been sorted so the ID sign is not yet in use, so that made it easier as I didn't have to fiddle with taking down and putting up the sign on display.
Also Mark sent me the revised species list for the rockpool display; the number of species has dropped, due almost entirely to the unstoppable eating machine called 'Satan'.... the velvet swimming crab that is dominating all others in the rockpool domain. Shorter species list meant I could thin down the ID panels for the display from three to two, and increase the spacing on the signs themselves so that it didn't look so cramped. I was pleased with the result, especially as now all the remaining species have an ID photo to go with it so it looks complete. Once finished I printed and laminated both panels and took them up to Bug World to replace the others.

Tuesday 2nd
Today I spent all day painting the lizard. I am struggling a bit with this one too...but working on the larger size is definitely an improvement for my eyes. I finished the female in the background and started on the male.
This is some of the reference photo's I am using...

I have used two photo's for the female one for the head and one for the body. For the male it gets more complicated as our male is still not fully coloured up in maturity and the majority of ref pictures I took of him were last year when he had no colour at all as he was still immature. So I have photo's taken from the internet showing the colour of fully mature males. they have blue on their undersides that creep up round between the front and back legs. The back on each side has a rose tint and the throat is blue also. I'm having to guess a bit with the blue as photo's notoriously do not necessarily depict acurate colour, so I'm going for a mid ground on the references that I have and can tweek this once the keepers have seen the illustration and can guide me better on the tone of the blue from their experience with this species. So for the male I have used (so far) 5 photo's... 2 used for throat shape, 2 used for throat colour I used for the fore foot, 3 will be used for body colour and at least three for the tail. The main positional photo can be seen but I have slightly changed the head position and front foot.

Wednesday 3rd

Three of the new format Bug World ID's needed redoing as Mark (Assistant Curator - Invertebrates) pointed out several errors - two scientific names needed changing and some text altered. When I had been up in Bug World yesterday I had noticed a display with Fregate beetles. This is a species we have had before and had not been shown on display for quite some time. It had an old style ID sign, so today I compiled a new sign for it in the new format. I ended up having to do it twice as on the first the scientific name was mis-spelt and I hadn't put the correct map on. This doesn't seem much for a days work but some of it was a bit involved and took time to do. One thing was that Anna had done the ID signs in Illustrator and she works without layers in that application. But I do work with layers and so I needed to set up layers on a new template and change some of the ID's she has already done. I felt bad changing it to layers (Anna has worked very hard on the signs) but as I shall be the one working with these signs the most, it makes sense to have it set up in a way I can work with.

Monday 8th

Back to painting the lizard. Did that for the whole day except to remove the black hornbill ID's from the three Forest of Birds 'book' displays as the birds have now been moved into the refurbished Round Aviary.
More blanks were printed and laminated, as several species are being moved around as the Round Aviary is done and birds are taken off show or moved, some spaces have appeared in the ID holders.

Tuesday 9th

Today I wasn't at work. I have swapped my days this week as I have a meeting with Dr Kate Evans of Elephants For Africa and so I shall be in on Thursday instead.

Wednesday 10th

The blanks I printed on Monday were put on the appropriate aviaries this morning and as I was doing that I saw Nigel (Curator of Birds) who let me know that they have just put in some Roulroul partridge in with the wrinkled hornbills who are also now in the Round Aviary. For the former I just printed off two copies of their ID from the computer and the latter's ID sign was not yet complete. So I finished off that, but had to double check some of the text with Nigel first. This called into question some text on the black hornbill's ID so that had to go back to Education to check.
I had two more species ID's to remove from the Forest of Birds, which meant I had to do some more reprinting as the ID's are back to back in a page format presented like a book. So for one species to be removed, the whole page has to come out, which means taking out a species that doesn't need to be taken out. I reprinted the ID's of two species that are to remain so that they can go back in the 'books' on display.

Finally at around 4.30pm I could get back to painting the lizard!

Thursday 11th

In the morning I was painting the lizard, progress is slow but steady. I am making sure I get frequent eye breaks as I don't want my eyes going fuzzy like they did last time I did a lizard that was a strain.

In the afternoon I had some laminating to do for Phil for the Splash area and Wild Place, which I then delivered to the main office. On the way back as I entered the small yard at the side of the education building I saw that Dave had two of the ferrets out for a bit of enrichment. Standing close by to keep them out of mischief and from going where they shouldn't he lets them run loose, investigating all the nooks and crannies, flower pots, stacks of equipment and the bits and bobs that have accumalated. My favourite of the ferrets was one of the ones that was out, Elf - she has the polecat markings. She's a bit of a character. Dave was barefooted and I question the sense of this with two ferrets on the loose. He laughed it off and said, 'Oh they won't bite'. I walked to the door stopping to say hi to Elf. She ran up to me (aw, how sweet was that) and stretched up my bare leg looking up at me with her sparkly eyes. 'Don't you go up my trousers.' I laughed with a little trepidation as I had crop trousers on that were cut wide. Elf promptly turned her head and sank her teeth into the skin on my shin! And then ran away all bouncy and excited. Bless her! I looked down, just a scratch, no problem - it wasn't a vicious bite, as Dave said she was just a little too excited.

Back in the studio... as the hornbills (wrinkled and black) were now on show, having spent a day or two indoors to get used to their new surroundings, I needed to get the ID for the wrinkled up on the aviary. The black's had already been done and were already put up. I checked with education... the text for the wrinkled was fine, but the black's needed checking still. So I could now finish and print the wrinkled's ID and get that laminated and up on show along with the roulroul partridge ID.

As is usual of late, here are some photo's taken over the last two weeks at the zoo...

A new beetle sculpture was installed near the entrance to Bug World

I think this is the stegoaurus... looking great in amongst the planting.

I saw the fish being fed by a visitor one day and they were coming out of the water and onto the stony lake edge to get at the food. A mallard was literally stepping on fish to get its share too.

Our two North American river otters enjoying the sunshine and a spot of mutual grooming.

I have been told on a few occasions over the years what this extraordinary plant is called, but I keep forgetting!! It smells quite rancid.... the flies love it!