Happy New Year

Happy New Year greetings. For those of you who have been following this blog I'd like to thank you for taking your time to read my posts and I have much appreciated the kind comments you have sent me. I hope my jottings will continue to be of interest and hope that you will come back again and again to see what I've been up to.
I am now on leave as part of my part-time work arrangements, I shall be away from the zoo until the beginning of February, so although there will be no 'working posts' three times a week.. I shall endeavour to post something of work I have done in previous years to fill the 'void'.

In the meantime I hope you had a fabulous Christmas and New Year and hope 2013 will be a good one for us all.

Spiny starfish

Apologies if you have been  following this blog and wondered where my posts have been for the last couple of weeks. I was working at the zoo but sorry to say I actually never got round to putting a post up.

I had been working on the spiny starfish illustration (Marthasterias glacialis).

The reference pictures I had were mainly from the internet; as despite numerous visits to the underwater area of Seal and Penguin where their tank is situated, I could never time it when the starfish were out in good view... they were always hidden down amongst the rocks in their tank.

So I decided to base the position of the starfish on the image in the top right of the ref pictures. 

Despite the starfish hiding from me I knew that their colouring was different to any of the starfish on my ref pictures... there is a lot of variation, but I wanted the illustration to relate to our animals more... so I popped back down after I had drawn the basic shape to get a long look at the animals. Typically one was out in full view... and I didn't have the camera!! So after dashing back to the studio to grab the camera I managed to get a few shots of the starfish before it disappeared back down into the crevices between the rocks.

These would be no good for positioning and the drawing I had done would fit nicely into the box shape available for the illustration on the ID format for fish, so there's no need to change that. But these would be good for details such as the placement and spacing of the nodules on its arms and the colouration.

The illustration itself was done over two days... this is the finished illustration before I corrected the black background to 'pure' black on the computer.

The matt black I paint as the background when scanned in never comes out as 'pure' black so I have to alter this in Photoshop before adding to the ID document. Although this particular fish display does not have a lightbox to display the ID sign I correct the black just in case in the future it is moved to a tank that does have a lightbox. If I did not change the black to '100% black' it would show up greyish on the lightbox and we want the illustration background to join seamlessly with the black of the rest of the ID sign. 

To do this I first choose the brush tool and set the size of the brush to a large diameter to cover a large area of the image in one stroke. I then use the magic wand to select the background and then invert this so that when I brush over the image it will only affect the background area. I then choose a bright colour (in this case red) and brush over the illustration until all of the background is covered.  Then I change the brush size to a much smaller diameter and change the colour of the brush stroke to 100% black. I then cover the red area in close to the starfish. I get as close as I can but not right up to the edge of the painting. 

So the image then looks like the above. Next I change the brush size to an even smaller diameter and zoom right in on the image.

I change the softness of the brush stroke edge from 100% hard to around 50% had so that the colour left by the brush stroke fades out slightly. By doing this I soften the effect on the illustration and it doesn't look 'cut out' of harsh. I take the brush strokes right up to the edge of the painting and in this case it took a long time because of all the fiddly little spines on the bottom of each arm. Until it looks like the pic below all the way around the painting. 

I take this opportunity to 'tidy' up any overlaps or bits of the painting that I don't really want there. 

The illustration just needs one final 'tweek'... I adjust the colour that was slightly lost in the scanning process.

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.

Checked out

Missed Wednesday's post last week - got the pipefish painting checked by Sam from the Aquarium and  he picked up on the tail section. I had found it very hard to get any reference either from the live animal or from any photo's that I took myself or found on the internet. Sam pointed out that the fish was more sectioned and square rather than round as I had done it. So I looked again at the live animals trying to work out what was happening. It has differing 'planes' to its body that change as it passes the dorsal fin. So I tried again, and again.. finally think I got it on the fourth try at the tail from the dorsal fin back.

So took it back to the Aquarium today for Jonny to see and check. Thankfully I had managed to get it right this time...

Scanned it to the computer and blacked out the background in Photoshop and then dropped the finished picture document into the ID document and printed, then laminated and trimmed it and put it up next to the tank the fish are in in the underwater area of the Seal and Penguin Coasts exhibit. This is how the illustration looks like as the ID sign.

I also managed to get the red-bellied lemur illustration checked and ok'd and also printed off three copies of that ID - one to put up now and two more to go up in the Lemur Walkway when it reopens for the school half term at the beginning of February. 

Emily from the Mammal Section checked the illustration for me whilst we stood by the indoor area of the ring-tailed lemurs. The young ring-tail, a female called Dizzy, was bouncing around the wooden poles and other adults like a looney. Her name certainly suits. I recalled how, a few months ago, I watched her pogo-ing the distance of several feet between two adults (one of whom was her Mother) during her early forays and adventures off her Mum.  

I also had a meeting today with Ben who works with Projects. They are planning some alterations in Bug World and this means moving interior walls to accommodate new tanks and make the keeper's areas bigger for better husbandry and access. Unfortunately in the area there is to be a lot of work one of my life size murals will be affected. The giant squid covers the walls and in some parts the ceiling so there will be a lot of repainting of said squid... if we keep it. So the meeting was to discuss what was involved and any other ideas.

Monkeying around

This morning I was due to meet Eddie from Maintenance to start tweeking the Christmas animal shape lights. I went to our arranged meet point and waited. After a while I started pacing, not through impatience as such but to keep myself warm as although it wasn't really cold, standing around for half an hour soon had me feeling chilly. To amuse myself I practiced the steps for a waltz, which was fine as being not long after the zoo had opened it was still quiet visitor wise.
One of the groundsmen passed by and I got him to contact Eddie, who was apologetic but he had been detained on another job, so we arranged to meet later.

Back in the warmth of the studio I started working on the pipefish painting and as the text had arrived back from the Education Office for the red-bellied lemurs I also set about compiling the ID document for that. The text needed adjusting a couple of times to fit into the space and there was also a small adjustment on the wording. I am still waiting for the animal section to come and ok the illustration, but it'll have to wait for a  bit as Lynsey, who is to check it, has a lot going on in her section at the mo. It's not a problem as the animals aren't officially on show yet, although they can sometimes been seen when they are in the ring-tailed lemur indoor area during the' mixing' stages. The process of integrating new animals to established animals is a long, carefully monitored procedure with the animals being given plenty of time to get used to each other before they become fully integrated.

During the morning Eddie called the studio to change our meet time to an earlier one as he would be free to to the lights sooner than he expected. So just before lunch I donned my warm coat and hat and went to meet him. As I waited I watched blackbirds and robins picking through the fallen leaves looking for tasty morsels of insects or crumbs dropped by the public. The lorikeets were in a big aviary close by and their noisy chatter filled the air.

Eddie brought the 'cherry-picker', a small motorised platform with an arm that can be raised and maneuvered into position high off the ground. He needed this to get at the monkey shape lights in the tree I had met him by. There were 4 monkey's that needed adjusting, two had to be re-hung in better positions (one was wrongly hung upside-down) and the rest needed their shapes pulling/bending back into the form they are supposed to be and/or having the light tubing cable-tied to the aluminium frame to create the form of the animal. As they are a few years old now some of the cable-ties had come off over time so the finer shape of a face or foot would be lost. We finished the tweeking of these 4 monkeys in about half an hour by which time it was lunch.

I took these two photos in a previous year of two of the monkey shapes lit up in the dark, the first one still had some 'tweeking ' to do on the light tubing around its back legs and feet. The shapes are pretty near to life size as we could get.

The afternoon was spent working on the pipefish painting and popping up to The Heap of Trouble exhibit with Anna, to remove a sign or two.  I have almost finished the pipefish, I'm leaving it overnight to see what it looks like with fresh eyes tomorrow, I think it still needs a bit of work and I'm not entirely sure about it as I've had to do some guesswork on the tail structure as my reference photo's can't pick up that detail and it's too dark and the fish are too small in the tank to see properly. So Hopefully when I show Jonny tomorrow, if he's available, he can let me know if I need to do more work.

Greater pipefish

I started off the day with a quick visit to the reptile house, to photograph the ID sign for the Malayan box turtle- Cuora ambionensis. This is the old sign that I got a request for last week to duplicate as they have another enclosure with this species in, but because it was done many years ago it is no longer on the computer file system I have built up. So by photographing it I could easily see what text to put on the new ID document I was making for this species and also the range on the distribution map... rather than taking the old one down and leaving it with a sign for a while.
Whilst I was in the reptile house I took advantage of two lizards being out in good view and got photos of them too. These two lizards are species that are on my board - due to be done. So it always helps to get as much reference as poss when the opportunity presents itself.

I had seen Joe, from Maintenance on my way across to the reptile house and grabbed him to get some varnish for something I have been commissioned by the zoo to do. (More about that project on my other blog) And then on the way back to the studio I stopped off in the central office to pick up post and speak to a couple of folk in the offices there.

I took a few photo's on my way but once I got them uploaded to the computer I wasn't happy enough with them to keep on file. Then I got the info onto the new Malayan box turtle sign document and printed it off just after lunch.

Laminated and trimmed I then delivered it to the animal section. next job was to start on the greater pipefish.

This fish is long and thin and after a discussion with Phil, it was decided it would be ok for me to illustrate it curved round, as if it was changing direction as it was swimming along. The problem is if I painted it straight and side on because of it's length, to fit it into the space on the sign it would end up as very small and difficult to see. So by having it positioned curving round on itself I could have it larger in the space. As I had seen the fish doing this, it was a natural position to portray them in.

I took the basic shape from one of the photo's I had taken, altering the tail position so that it was more easily seen and better on the eye position -wise, but still keeping it natural. The caudal fin (tail) reference was another photo, as was the head, body lines and dorsal fin details. I have three other photos to use for the colouration and marking details.  I sometimes make notes with my drawings and with fish this usually relates to the number of rays in the fins as these are species specific. So I need good photo reference to be able to count the rays in the fins.

Last week I had painted the watercolour paper with my black mix (Lamp black, Ultramarine and Alizarin crimson) so once I had the drawing right (checking head lengths and comparative tail to head sizes etc) I traced it to the black background. Then painted in the base colours.

Whilst that dried I went out to walk around the Christmas animal shape lights, now that it was dark, to make a check on what they looked like 'lit up'. Not all of them were, but I was able to see some and add some more alterations to the list that are to be tweeked tomorrow. I have arranged to meet with Eddie in the morning to go around and fix those that have got a little mis-shapened or are placed/hung wrong. 

The zoo sounded quiet today... Kamal our Asiatic lion was put to sleep last week, so there were no calls from him sounding out across the grounds. He was 18 years old and his health had deteriorated badly, despite great veterinary care from our team of on site veterinary staff. Please read more about him here It is very sad when an animal dies or has to be euthanased, especially for those who cared for them on a daily basis. Kamal was loved greatly by his keepers, he was a fabulous lion to work with apparently, very gentle and tolerant, he will be missed terribly. I know I shall miss him, and I didn't have that wonderful experience of him that his keepers have. Rest in peace Kamal.

Rain stop play

Woke this morning to hear reports of flooding around the area and to see the rain still lashing down. The drive to work was fun negotiating many deep puddles trying not to drench pedestrians in waves of wash from the wheels. Had come to work prepared though, having packed a spare pair of trousers and a towels as I was due to spend some hours with Eddie tweeking the Christmas Animal Shape Lights into order and had expected to get a wee bit drenched from the bottom of my lovely warm waterproof coat down.  Met Eddie from Maintenance just after 9am in the pre-arranged place beneath one of the trees with the monkey shapes in. However the Maintenance team were dealing with a lot of flooding issues around the zoo grounds so the lights would have to wait til next week. We arranged to meet on Tuesday to do the lights.

On the way back I stopped for a few minutes in the meerkat house, where it was lovely and warm and my already very damp trousers could start drying a bit. All the troop were inside and they must have been expecting food, as they kept coming over to me and looking up at me with pleading eyes. But it was obviously playtime as they never stayed looking at me for long before they either went off looking for someone to wrestle with or someone pounced on them. So entertaining to watch and listen to.

Back to the studio and I was able to carry on with and finish the red-bellied lemur illustration.

Before it can be put on the ID sign file, it has to be 'ok'd' by the Animal Department so I contacted Lynsey, Assistant Curator of Mammals, to arrange a time where she can look at it.  Hopefully she will be able to come over to the studio this afternoon. 

Just before lunch I went through the photo's I had sorted previously for the Greater pipefish, Syngnathus acus, to choose the ones best to work from. I had taken photo's of the animals we have here at the zoo, but they did not come out very good at all as they are in a dark tank and the fish are relatively small, thin and like to hide making them very difficult subjects to photograph. I had a job finding good photo's on the internet too, so my references for them are very limited. I have looked at several websites getting written descriptions of them too which will help with the tiny fins that don't really show up on the photo's. This looks like it won't be an easy fish to get right. I think I will pop down to the tank they are in this afternoon with a camera just on the off chance of getting a fluke better shot.

The sun came out and was giving us a bright beautiful afternoon.... so after lunch I headed to the Seal and Penguin Coast exhibit to get some more photo's (hopefully) of the pipefish, who are housed in a tank in the underwater area.

On my way through the exhibit I could see the South American fur seals having a training session. This seal was practicing presenting his flipper... this training enables the keepers and veterinary department to examine and treat the seals without putting them through the stress of knocking them out with drugs.

Moving on down into the  underwater area I reached the pipefish tank. I got a few more photo's, nothing marvellous or particularly handy to work from, it doesn't help that flash photography in that area is not allowed so I was having to bank on natural light filtering down through the water of the penguin pool which was seen through the pipefish tank. I also adjusted the camera settings to get the best out of the low light situation.

As you can see not great photo's for details. So this illustration will be a bit of a challenge, especially when the animal itself is difficult to see in any light to get colour and details.

Whilst I was in the underwater area I looked in on the fur seal's pool, as there was some lovely light effects going on in the sunshine beneath the water. Whilst I was looking I noticed just in front of me a small white oval object drifting around in the gentle current of the water, it intrigued me and on closer inspection I saw that it was a pumpkin seed with a hitch hiker clinging on for dear life.  

This poor little insect was deep underwater on a life raft that showed no signs of rising to the surface... was it doomed to a watery grave? It might last a while as it was enveloped in a sheen of air that covered its body, so who knows... maybe the seed would eventually surface and the insect could fly away.

I had a couplke of requests come in for duplicate signs from the reptile house, one of which was no problem and was soon printed out and laminated ready to take to the section but the other one, a Malayan box turtle, was not so easy. It was not on the computer... I looked at all the other box turtle ID documents, all the relevant and not so relevant files. I checked the back ups and archive files... no sign of it apart from the illustration. Very confusing. 

Anna and I had to pop over to the Aquarium late afternoon to cover the blue-spot grouper sign from public view; he had, alas, died. Such a shame as he was a stunning fish and one of my favs. On our way out of the aquarium we popped into the reptile house next door so that I could see the Malayan box turtle sign they had on show. Having a good look at it Anna noticed that the font was very slightly different (as a graphic designer she can pick up on such things easily) and we both could see that the map was hand painted... so that made the sign a really old one... and it now made sense as to why I could not find the file on the computer... it was done many years ago and was probably a file of an old application that became obselete and unable to be read on the Macs as we updated them over the years.

We had a little look around the reptiles and watched a huge amethystine python newly emerged from sloughing... but with its middle section still cocooned in its old skin. In its new skin, the scales and colours looked beautiful and vibrant with a slight sheen of iridescence. 

We spoke to one of the reptile keepers who took us round the back into the keeper area to let us see the baby West African dwarf crocodiles close up. Not only that but we held one each too. I love baby crocs.. they are really quite cute and have beautiful markings, though I was sad that they never made that unmistakable baby croc call. They had been fed yesterday and their tummy's felt quite solid and full... once in the hand they calmed down quickly and it was wonderful to be so privileged. The one I held rested one of his hind feet on my thumb and his little digits wrapped round the curve of the end of my thumb as I gently moved his leg slightly up and down. I was in heaven...Anna wasn't so sure. At first she did not want to hold one, she said her mind just kept saying.. it's a crocodile! But she succumbed to their cuteness and held one. She took a photo of one in my hand.. so when she sends it to me I shall post it here.  

What a fab way to end the day and our working week..... she had something really cool to go home and tell her young son about.... I had another great zoo memory.                                                                                                                          .