Butts end

Decided to come back into work at the zoo today to finish the lion board. There's not much left to do and I know Anna will be busy next week as she will be on her own in the studio, so I didn't want her to worry about having to get the lion finished for me.

Here's me working on the board, tidying up a few lines and adding a second coat to the pale body colour it wasn't dark enough to hide the pencil marks underneath of the traced line of the original lion (which I altered a bit).

Here's the original lion board with the very rotten hole where the small nozzle was. The board has rotten a lot around the small aperture to the point that a child's head could almost be put through it. We are not sure who painted the original board but I think it was probably a great guy called Al, who worked at the zoo for a great many years in the Graphics Dept. He did a lot of the fun stuff decorating cut outs of animal shape and things for various uses around the zoo like the Activity Centre, Zoolympics and puzzles and pictures for the zoo magazine.  

It's a shame his lion has suffered, but it gave a good number of years service and I hope mine will do the same.

So here he is finished....

Everything Butt

The studio was overwhelmingly fumey this morning when I unlocked the door. I was hit with a wave of  gloss paint smell... not one I'm adverse to, but maybe not quite at that strength!! All windows were duly flung open in a bid to ventilate the room quickly.

Looking at my progress I was disappointed to see a few runs in the paint. Because of my shoulder and its limited movement, aches and pains I chose to work with the board standing on the floor leaning against my drawing desk rather than placing it flat on a table or the ground. The latter would indeed get rid of the paint's tendency to run but I would have found it very difficult to work on.

So, just plod ahead and adapt where necessary... I don't really like working to someone else's design... I know for this it needs to be more child-like than correct anatomically so again I need to try and dispense with what I would do and try to work within the design I have been given. I have adapted it a bit but  can't do too much other-wise it wouldn't fit the board shape.

By lunchtime I had got this far and needed to wait a bit for the paint to dry off a little before I continued.

Cracked on with the lion during the afternoon and this is how far I have got....

Butt, butt, butt...

This morning I put up the new signs in the Forest of Birds exhibit that I had put together last week. I got them up before the zoo got too busy with visitors. It is the last week of the Summer Holidays and with school starting up again next week it seems there is a last rush to get out and about by families.

I love going in the Forest of Birds.. not only is it invariably toasty in there but it's like a treasure trove. At first glance it just appears to be greenhouse of plants, but then you start noticing the birds hidden amongst leaves and on branches. Java sparrows, white-rumped shama, roul rouls, turaco's, hooded pitta, bleeding heart doves, Nicobar pigeon's and the splendid ornately headed Victoria crown pigeon's just some of the species in there. How many times have I been in there when people wandered in and said... "there's nothing in here" and wander back out, when I can see at least a dozen or so individual birds around them. Sometimes I have stopped them and pointed a few birds that are close by, surprised, they then start looking for themselves and often then end up spending some time there finding birds with a noticeable sense of satisfaction. That makes my day when that happens... seeing people look and appreciate with new eyes.

Back in the studio I traced the lion tracing onto the new board and mixing one of the greens with a bit of the yellow I started painting the foliage area on the board. I shall leave the lion until after I have done most of the foliage as then I can avoid having to carefully paint around things and paint over instead.

During the afternoon I had a visitor to the zoo, Dr Kate Evans an elephant conservation researcher with whom I am doing an exhibition project. She had dropped some leaflets of her charity 'Elephants For Africa' off to me and I took her on a little walk around the zoo before she had to leave for another appointment.

Tomorrow is my last day at the zoo for a couple of months... I am hoping I can get quite a bit done on the lion. If I don't finish it, then Anna will take over and finish it off next week or the week after.

Clean sweep

First thing this morning I put tape on the laminated IDs and went out for an hour and half to put them up and restick all the signs I had noted were loose.

Back in the studio I photocopied 30 guides for the butterfly house and got them all laminated before delivering them to the Butterfly Forest display. I took away the old, crumpled and rather worn out looking few that were left from the batch that had been in there for a month or two.

Before lunch Lynsey popped over to the studio to check the kowari picture and gave it the ok. So now all I have to do is print that out after lunch, laminate it and get it up on show in Twilight World.

I have 8 bird IDs left to get laminated - I had left these until last as they also need to be hole-punched for the "book" displays they are used for.

The afternoon started with me finishing off and getting the kowari up on display. I had to fiddle with the image in Photoshop before getting the sign printed, as the background of the drawing was not quite white enough and lightening it in balance levels bleached out the finer lines of the drawing. So with the brush tool set on a soft setting I cleaned up the surrounding area.

Once the kowari sign was up I then started looking at my next project. Painting a lion's rear end!

One of the favourite things around the lion enclosure for kids is the spraying lion. A wooden board painted with the rear end of a lion, was inset with a spray nozzle, which had a pipe to a water supply and by pressing a button water sprayed out of the 'lion' just under the tail. It was well used by the children, who loved the idea of a lion spraying but also just the fact that children and playing with water are a natural mix. Sadly the well loved 'toy' started to suffer and the wood around the nozzle got very rotten. So a new board has been cut in the same shape as the old one and my job is now to paint a replica lion rear end.

I traced the basic outline of the previous painted lion as a guide and then set about searching for reference of a lion's rear end.... I had to word the google search request carefully as I got some very dubious websites to start with!! As you can imagine there are many many images of lions on the internet... surprisingly few, though, of the rear end of one! I eventually found just 5 that would be useful.

A trip to the Maintenance Dept was made so that I could look through their paint store, but after a short look it was decided that it would be better just for me to order new tins. I was given a Dulux paint chart swatch and a quick look through ended with me requesting 5 tins... 2 greens, two browns and a yellow colour which should be delivered tomorrow. Which means I can start painting next week... but not Monday.. that's a Bank Holiday here in the UK so I will not be in work.

Kowari and Sweep

It took me just about half an hour to finish off the kowari this morning... making sure I had remembered to put in its whiskers, of course! So this is the finished drawing....

The grades of pencil I used continued to be 4H, H, F and 7B.. using the 7B only for the black of the eyes and tail. Also on the tail I added some work in with a 9B and took out some 'harsh' details on the fur of the body. The drawing has yet to be checked by the animal section but I have set up the digital file for the ID sign so that once I get that check done, if the verdict is all ok then I can print out the ID straight away. But if I need to do any tweeks, I will have to re-scan the pic and place it on the file. this is what the final sign should look like (without the watermark)... 

The font I used for the text is one called "Sean's other hand", as it closely resembles the text on other ID's in the Desert area of Twilight World, where the text was hand-written by a member of staff (before being scanned digitally and placed on the signs) who is away on holiday at the moment.  

Before lunch I had about 40 mins to go out into the zoo and start my 'Sweep' of IDs to see which need replacing, cleaned, re-sticking etc. Because I was away for about a month recently I had a lot to catch up on when I got back, so my bi-monthly "sweep" got delayed as a result. It was very busy and in some areas I struggled to move easily through the crowds. I managed to get about half way around the site and came back with a relatively small list of stuff to do.

After lunch I continued on my "sweep'. Whilst I go around I also clean up some signs that are cobwebby or have become dirty. Surprisingly there wasn't too much to sort out and once back in the studio I started on the computer, printing out the ID signs needed. I had two already on file that I could use so that left me with only 16 IDs to print - 15 for birds and 1 for mammals.

By the end of the day all were printed out and most laminated.

Kowari

On checking my emails this morning I found I had a request to put up two more ID's for the Bird Section. These two species , Soccoro Dove and white-rumped shama, we have elsewhere in the zoo and ID's have been done for them before, so it was just a question of finding out whether a single or double version was required and then printing them out. As it happened I had a Socorro dove ID on file but the shama had to be printed off. To add to the job I also had to print out a single version of the Palawan peacock pheasant ID also, as the one on show was a double and I needed the space (doubles obviously take the space of two singles) to put up the shama. The job was done easily with no complications or hitches which was nice as the first job after the weekend.

As I walked across the zoo I saw a grey heron circling over the zoo, that was quite unusual.. usually we get lesser black-back and herring gulls and jackdaws.. so I was drawn to watching it. I saw it circle the centre of the zoo over the lake area twice before peeling off and flying away... with two gulls in pursuit who when they caught up with it took to harassing it to ensure it continued on its way. No doubt it could see the multitude of carp in our lake.. and had fanciful ideas on doing a spot of fishing there. Perhaps it was the enclosed nature of the area and/or the amount of people walking around that put it off. Maybe it is or will now be a night-time visitor.

Next I started on the illustration of the kowari. This is a pencil drawing so should be done fairly quickly. I sketched out the animal's shape first, having though about what position would 'sit' nicely on the finished ID. I have a selection of 6 images that I am using and one of them had the basic position I thought would suit the purpose, however it was sat on some branches and I wanted to put this one on the ground so I changed the feet and added the two limbs farthest from the viewer as they were not in the photo and it would look strange without them as an illustration.

Once I had the animal's body shape mapped out (you can see the circles I used to 'plan' the animal's size and position) I then traced it onto a piece of Schoellershammer paper. This is lovely to work on with graphite pencils. I have a soft wash brush to take away the loose graphite without smudging the drawing, a piece of paper under my right (drawing) hand as I work from left to right. I also have a scalpel to keep my pencils sharp and a piece of test paper to try out pencil strokes and weight on.

I started on the head using 4H and F pencils for the fur and 7B for the eyes (except for the reflected light on the right hand eye, which was done using the 4H). I use strokes short and carefully follow the direction of fur around the face and ears, building up from the lightest of touches with the pencil to darker tones - changing grade of pencil as it darkens to stop me pressing hard and creating indentations in the paper. 

By lunchtime I had got this far.....

By the end of the day I had got this far.....

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.