11th - 14th

Mon 11th

This morning I went across to collect my new zoo trousers that I had ordered last week from Roger, who works as part of the Front Of House team, and then picked up the mail from the Central Office on the way back. On my little excursion I noticed that the dinosaurs have returned! Several dinos were sitting near to where they were to be positioned, some were partially unwrapped, so they have only arrived in the last day or so I should think. 

I also noticed that there were some bird ID's missing off one of the aviaries, luckily there was a keeper on hand who explained that a few birds had been moved around. So back in the studio I printed off two new ID signs for the white winged wood duck - Cairina scutulata, trimmed, laminated and trimmed them again to size before heading back out to put them up on the aviary in question. Whilst I was out I headed round to the Flamingo Paddock to check on the male ruff (still no change although his feather colouration around the neck is changing slightly). On coming out of the paddock I noticed that the two Asiatic lion cubs, Ketan and Kamran were out enjoying some playtime in the sun. I had brought my camera to take a few pics of the dinosaurs and whatever else might be interesting too.

The two boys were quite boisterous and the bigger of the two, Ketan, was busy 'hunting' the couple of small children who were watching them with great delight. Apparently this his favourite game at the moment. They are about 4 months old now and are looking like a pair of happy playful, mischievous cubs.

Whilst I was out with the camera I wandered on round to Bug World to check again on the mural for water damage just in case any wood had taken its time to show signs of water invasion. Luckily all still seems to be ok. But whilst I was there I saw that in one of the tanks a number of the invertebrates were out in better view so I took photo's of bristleworms, brittlestars and the hermit crab.

Walking through Bug World I took a quick look at all the exhibits a) to make sure nothing new was on display that I needed to know about and b) just because I like looking at all the animals. I found a new one..... a huntsman spider who was donated to the zoo after being discovered in luggage by some people after returning from their travels. Glad I didn't find this beastie... although harmless it sure looks like the proverbial 'scary spider' of my nightmares. Still... I do find them fascinating to look at and them being enclosed safely out of reach, behind glass, makes that easier! 

Huntsman spider

When I came out of Bug World I passed another of the dinosaurs, one with feathers this time and at its feet a male blackbird was foraging in the newly positioned soil for any tasty morsels disturbed by the gardener's work. I couldn't resist the picture of a bird at the huge feet of one of its ancestors.

Back to the studio to sort out the photos and start work on the next illustration... the flounder. I mixed up some more black (I always make my own mix of Lamp black, Ultramarine and Alizarin crimson) and after damping a piece of Saunders watercolour paper (300grms) I applied the colour to it. Onto this I then traced the outline of the flounder and applied a base coat of a neutral light colour. It's hard to describe what colour it is being neither grey, beige, fawn or pale green... but a mix of all three.

Tuesday 12th

Most of today was spent painting the flounder. I had a break later in the day to go over to the Feed the Lorikeet aviary to remove the white winged wood duck ID's (they had been moved to another aviary - which I did the signs for yesterday,) I could not use the same signs as they are presented in different ways. The Feed the Lorikeet aviary was closed to the public but staff were working in there trying to clear out the volumous build up of sludge in the aviaries pond. The water pump had failed (hence the moving of the ducks out to another aviary) and whilst the ducks were out and the pond very low in water level the decision was made to clear the sludge. Not a nice job, especially on such a bitter cold day! They were having problems pumping the gunk out as the pipes kept getting blocked with all the stones, twigs and other debris in the sludge. I removed my signs and left them to it.

The flounder was tricky to do, due to my unhelpful reference pictures, but I was able to glean enough from them and my own observations of the fish to finish the illustration. I finished late in the day again and it was too late to get it checked by the animal section so that'll wait until tomorrow.

Flounder

Wednesday 13th

Contacted Jonny from the Aquarium not long after I got in and arranged to go over to get the painting checked. Jonny was happy with the illustration so I was able to go back and start the process of colour correcting the black background to 'pure' black on the computer. After scanning the image in I drew around the outside of the fish with a red pencil tool on the computer... this took some time as I had a lot of spines to go between carefully and I was able to 'tidy' them up a bit too..... such small fiddly details my eyes find hard to do on the painting these days. So it's handy that we use digital images for our signage, I can do such corrections a whole lot easier!

Once I had drawn completely around the fish I then converted all the back background to red before then selecting it all and converting it to the 'pure' black.  It's easier to use another colour first as I can see much more easily where I have been... drawing black onto black (even if the blacks are of different values) has a tendency to strain the eyes.

Once that was done it was placed in a folder on the computer and the image added to the ID sign for the flounder. It won't be printed out yet as there is another species on the same ID, still to be done... my next project..... the Shanny - Lipophrys pholis.

So to prepare for my next illustration of shanny, I check the ref pictures I had gathered for it so far... again same problem as I have had with the seahorse and flounder recently... dark tanks, secretive fish... not great photos!

So I do an internet image search... very frustratingly so many images... but just of the head. I had shots of the head I needed tail, body , dorsal fin and the finage on the ventral (underneath) side of the body. In the end I found a few pictures of the bits I needed reference for but it took me a very long time searching, putting in different names... the common names (it has several) and the scientific name. With each name I get mostly the same images but one or two different ones. In the end I printed 4 A4 sheets... each holding about 7 - 9 pictures.

Using these I was able to get a drawing together for the fish. getting the ref for the underside of the fish was the trickiest as I found just three images of a shanny NOT lying on a rock and therefore showing the fins underneath and only one of these showed the fins splayed so that I could count the rays to get that right. Hard work!

I went back down to the Seal and Penguin Coasts exhibit to try and get some more photo's of the actual fish and although I saw two... they were both in very dark areas and one was only showing his head. SO not much help! However... the one that was just showing its head was a male as he was very dark, almost black in colouration and his upper lip was white-ish. I took a photo using a tripod...

When I got back to the studio, looked at the image on screen and brought up the light levels I noticed the pale dots on the surface of his hiding place behind him. Back on the internet to check some info.. were these eggs? I checked several sites and yes the male guards the eggs and the eggs are stuck to a surface such as rocks in a crevice. I contacted Jonny in the Aquarium via email with the pic attached... as its such a dark area I didn't know whether he knew they were there. He replied that they weren't there earlier that morning when he checked the tank, so he went back to retrieve them to rear them on in safety, as the male sometimes eats the eggs. 

Thursday 14th

If you are a regular reader you will know that I don't usually work Thursdays... I had some hours to make up for a day I took off recently and the All Staff Meetings had been arranged, unusually, on Thursday and Friday this time... they are usually split up to cover the first and latter parts of the week. So I chose to work this morning so that I could attend the meeting and make up some time too. I particularly wanted to be at the meeting as one of my colleagues at the zoo - Ginny, a good work friend, was celebrating her 30th year working at the zoo! The Director, Bryan, and her Line Manager, Nick, both said some words to thank Ginny for all her years of service which was lovely and she got a warm round of applause from the staff.

After the meeting, when I was back in the studio I got a call from Ginny to say there was cake to be had, but I had better be quick as it was going rapidly! So I hot-footed it across to the finance office, where Ginny works, to get some cake for a few of us who work in the Education Centre. It was delicious too!

I prepared the background for the shanny with a black coat of gouache and let that dry, I prefer to wait until the paint is several hours dry before trying to trace onto it or paint a base coat. So whilst that dried I went on the computer and started doing checks on the references I have for the next four species on my to do list. These are the Roti Island snake neck turtle, Timor Island zebra finch, great plated lizard and blue spiny lizard. All of which had photos to crop, change light and colour levels on and sort out good photos from bad. This took me to lunchtime when it was time to go home, as I was only doing a half day today.

I finish with a couple more photo's that I took at the zoo this week.

 African penguin catching the fish thrown in during a feed.

And two of our female Western lowland gorillas. The older gorilla was enjoying a carrot whilst the younger female looked on enviously.

4th - 6th March

Monday 4th

After returning the dust sheet and paints to maintenance from the last couple of week's mural painting I popped across the zoo to the Flamingo Paddock to check on the male ruff's plumage. I have to change the ID sign over when they go into breeding plumage as they look so different. I'm keeping a weekly eye on this, as last year the males started growing their ruff feathers earlier than the previous year. As the birds are maturing (we had them when they were quite young adult birds) it seems they are coming into breeding condition earlier. I guess this will level out once they reach a certain age. Last year it was the end of April, so I'm trying to be prepared just in case they change even earlier than last year.

Now that all is done on the giant squid mural I can get back to the illustration I started before Christmas; which is of a short-snouted seahorse Hippocampus hippocampus. I had got the black background and a base coat of one colour on the seahorse body, so now it was time to finish it. The reference I have is very unsatisfactory in that I had little luck getting images off the internet for that specific species in the colour mode ours are in and with all the details I need for head, tail, fins body markings etc. The photo's I had taken of the animals at the zoo were poor due to the very low light levels of the tank they are kept in and observing them for such details isn't helped by the low light and the fact that they like to hide and curl up. So I struggled a bit getting the colours etc I wanted.

Tuesday 5th

What a beautiful day! The sun graced us with its presence all day and it was quite warm. As I walked in this morning and passed the meerkat enclosure they were all out standing on various bits in their outside area to get the full benefit of the sun's warming rays.

They are just so cute..... had to take a few piccies of them!

First mission of the day was to go and have another look at the seahorses.... so camera in hand I went to the Seal and Penguin Coasts exhibit, where the seahorses are kept in a tank in the underground area. On my way I had to take this piccie of a wood pigeon... just made me smile that it was sat on the huge stag beetle sculpture....

I attempted to get more reference pictures of the seahorse and to have another look at them again... but once again they were mostly hidden and curled up, so no chance of getting any better images or observations. So back to the painting and taking educated guesses on a lot of it. I persevered through the day and by just before 5pm I got it done and headed over to the off show fish rooms to get it checked by Grier, a keeper on the Ectotherm Section (cold-blooded animal). It passed muster with no changes to be made. Phew!

I had a little break during the day, as I was struggling with the seahorse and needed to rest my eyes from it for a while; so I helped Anna, my colleague the graphic designer. She has to change the font and the overall size of the ID signs for Bug World. Our Line Manager has selected a number of fonts and put them to a collective vote by the Education staff to see what works best for readability. As there are a number of ID documents still in the old design application software of Quark and Freehand (I am in the long process of converting them all) I sat at the computer for an hour or so converting 7 invertebrate ID documents to Illustrator (design software application). This also involved me nipping over to Bug World to check what animals were currently on show, so that Anna need only update those to the new format.

On my way back from getting the seahorse checked at the end of the day I walked back round the zoo the long way, as it was still beautifully sunny and the light was lovely and low. It sometimes enables you to see and notice things you may pass every day for the last 17 years in a different way. This was the case as I passed the rockery garden area.. the light shining through an evergreen's thick foliage caught the bark of the trunk... just enough for me to think.. 'that looks different'. I bent to look up under the foliage and saw a beautifully lit array of trunk and branches, with warm reddish colours and purple blue shadows. I was so taken with it ... yes I took a photo!

Last job of the day was to scan in and colour correct the image of the seahorse ready to be put on its ID document tomorrow.

Wednesday 6th

This morning was supposed to be my sketching morning but it was drizzly and cold and grey, quite a dramatic change from yesterday's lovely sunshine. So I put my sketching off until the afternoon. Instead I  was back on the computer to put the image of the seahorse on its sign and add the text and pic of a greater pipefish too, as there was also at least one in the same tank. Once that was printed, trimmed to size, laminated and trimmed to size again I could put it up on section. I also had to put up two blank ID's on a bird aviary after noticing, on my walk back to the studio yesterday evening, that the red-crested turaco ID had been removed from one holder and turned round on another. So the latter was done first and then I headed back to the Seal and Penguins Coasts underground area. As I passed the first tank, which holds flounder and shanny I saw that the flounder were clearly visible... probably the first time I have seen them so well... and I didn't have the camera with me! This was the next species to do on my list... so I rushed back to the studio to grab a camera and then back to take several pics of the flounder fish and one of the shanny's was out of hiding too so I grabbed a few of him as he's next after the flounder to be painted.

The pictures were the best I have got yet, but still not brilliant and even worse than the ones I had for the seahorse!! Hey ho.... will see how I get on with them.

We had a phone call from Benn (Estates) to say that one of the new tanks (in the set up process) in the new area just built in Bug World had burst and flooded. There is a safety flood barrier set up but unfortunately the water ran out of a broken seal on the tank, down the wall behind the mural and to the floor where there was a little gap between the wall and the flood defense... and of course it went down that gap! there was some leakage into the restaurant below but I don't think it was serious. I was sent up to check the artwork of the mural to see if it had any water damage. From what I could see in the low light level of the room the mural had survived unscathed. Luckily there were no corals or other animals in the tanks that were affected... two tanks ran on one system, so both emptied. But the poor staff in Bug World have a lot of extra work to do to repair the tank and reset the system.

Just before lunch I got the drawing for the flounder done.

After lunch I wrapped up warm and headed out to sketch. I spent the first hour and half sat outside around the back of the gorilla island. The gorillas weren't about much,  I only got a few sketchy lines of them, so I used the birds that came into view as my subjects.... moorhens, a mallard, two Chiloe wigeon, a couple of jackdaws, a collared dove and a gull (sketched using my binoculars). None of them were particularly good I was very rusty. But it was good to get some practice in, however awful the results were. 

I got very cold so I headed to a warm spot... the Reptile House. By now the visitor numbers had quietened down so I could sit in my foldaway chair in front of the West African dwarf crocodile enclosure and not be in anyone's way for viewing. The male crocodile was laid out on dry land in a good position for me to sit fairly close (behind the glass) and I stayed there for the next hour drawing his portrait.

At the end of the day just after closing the house at 4.30pm, Tim the Curator of Reptiles came round to the crocodile enclosure. He has a small grill he needed to fix over a pipe that fed water from the croc pool to a turtle pool next door. His attempt failed as the female swam across the pool quickly and defended her territory from him with an aggressive presence. I don't blame him for deciding to come back and try another day... she positioned herself right by the pipe and it would have been unwise for anyone to put their hand down to attach a grill over it. That's how we knew I had been drawing the male... he continued to lay calmly, where he had no doubt been all afternoon, his head came up slightly for a few seconds but that was about it in regards to his response to Tim being in their territory. Apparently the females are the more aggressive defenders. This is her, after she followed Tim round to where I was, coming out of the pool to hold her position and point of view regarding his attempt to get in her domain. One female definitely not to mess with!

I left just after as Tim wanted to shut the house up ready to go home. So again I walked the long way back to the studio and found the red pandas wandering around after just being fed. Again... a number of photo's were taken... they looked great and the light was actually quite nice on them despite being very grey still. 

Squid paint job 2

The following week I continued to build up the body and tentacles. And now I had to do some colour mixing. First colour to match was a pale blue pink for the two long extended tentacles... this took about an hour and a half to get right and involved some mixing, dabbing a little on the original colour then waiting for it to dry, as the colour darkens when it is dry. So I was adding a little blue, dabbing it, waiting for it to dry... then adding more blue or red and dabbing again and waiting for it to dry... this process was repeated well over 8 times to get the colour as close as I could to the original. During the drying times I would look in on the tanks in the room, which is the Ocean Zone of Bug World. Apart from Lola's tank (the European lobster) there was a small tank with bubble tip soft corals.

This tank is very pretty with the delicate pink of the soft coral and if you are patient and look carefully you can see other creatures in there too... there is a handsome red legged hermit crab, some bristleworms, brittlestars, button star, sponges, little brine shrimp type critters, tiny clams with feather dusters on them. I did spend a lot of my 'drying times' peering into this tank.

Once the blue pink tentacles were painted in I then had another major colour matching session for the maroon red, a pink colour for the undersides of the tentacles and a deeper blue for the  reflections on the squid body. Again it took several hours to get these colours as close as I could. I got the maroon red done first and applied that over the new amendments on the tentacles blending into the old paint to soften the  effect of any tiny colour difference. 

Colour matching the blue. I had three tubes of acrylic paint to add to the emulsion to see which would make the blue I wanted. Cerulean blue, Windsor blue and Ultramarine blue. In the end I used a mix of Windsor and Ultramarine adding a large amount to a small quantity of the background blue.

This blue was dry brushed over the top edges of the squid's body and tentacles to give some form and indicate a bit of reflection from the water. I used the pink to paint in the undersides of the tentacles and add some under reflection on the squid's body. Again dry brush strokes blended the new paint to the old.

The finished squid 1

The finished squid 2

The finished squid 3

I stayed after work on one evening to paint the two areas at either end of the squid; one end (the 'doorway' into the next section of Bug World) to add the tail fluke and blue background and the other to continue the background round to the edge of the mural in the 'halfway exit'. Both of these areas would have been difficult to paint without causing inconvenience to the visitors. So it was easier and ultimately quicker and safer for me to paint them when the 'house' was shut in the evening.

On the final thing to do was to add the suckers on the tentacles. For these I used some potatoes cut up into 'stamps' with three sizes of circles and two sizes of half circles. I dipped these into white emulsion and dabbed them onto the tentacles. And that was it... all done. It has taken about three weeks in all to get prepared for and actually paint, but it was fun to do and the Ocean Zone inhabitants kept me interested during the times I was waiting for paint to dry.     

This is 'Satan', a velvet swimming crab and the top predator in the Rock Pool Tank. He/she is a beautifully marked and coloured crab, which does not show up in this photo. He/she shares the tank with other crabs, a goby fish called 'Obi Wan Gobi', anemones, hermit crabs and various other invertebrates. Again another good tank to watch patiently.

Squid paint job

Well, what with one thing and another time to post over these last two weeks has been a bit rare and consequently I'm now on a catch up series of posts.

Over the last two weeks I have been painting the squid, amending the body and tentacle alignment after the building work. In my last few posts I was preparing for the squid job... now I had just to slap the paint on!

My paints, mixing pots, ref photos and other paraphernalia

I am using Dulux Weathershield Diamond emulsion with a satin finish. I have  a blue which I have matched to the original background colour (it has been painted over several times with paler, less intense blues) This blue is more intense and makes the deep red colour 'sing out' giving the squid more dramatic impact. And I have a deep maroon type red for the squid body.

The first thing I did was to start painting in the blue background, making the corrections to the tentacles and body alignment as I went. I concentrated first on getting the wall with the head and tentacles as far as the tank and screen to the right. As it was quite warm in Bug World the paint dried fairly quickly which meant that once Ihad done the blue I could go back and where it was dry paint in the red of the tentacles. The colour I had chosen for the squid was a close match, but was a little too red and in some places it did not cover the underlying paint. So I planned to add some blue to it to darken and dull the hue... but this would come a little later. You can see in the photo the colour difference from where I have freshly painted the body and the head is the old colour.

I was aware that I had just a day or two before my 'week' was up and I wanted to get it looking basically joined up and presentable for the Thursday through to the Monday as it was school half term break and going to be busy; so it would be nice if it looked half decent for the visitors.

Across the room in a large cold water tank is Lola. A recent change in her lighting (reversing day and night) meant her tank was dark, lit with an eerie blue light, but she was more active during our day as she thought it was night. Lola is an impressive beastie and several times as I waited for paint to dry I went across to look at her.

Ooops, missed Wednesday and it's already Monday!

Not quite got back into the swing of posting a blog after each day I work at the zoo, so I will try and catch up today.

Wednesday last week was pretty much quiet job-wise. After spending a goodly portion of the morning on the computer typing wordy stuff I spent a good portion of the afternoon in a Guest Service Training session arranged which all members of staff have attended over the past week. This ties in with the Guest Charter the zoo has recently implemented. After that I had a look at the photos of the squid mural and started mapping out the rejoining of the tentacles and thinking about the practicalities of getting the job done.

Before the building work

After the building work

Monday 11th

This morning has been all about the squid. I have been up to Bug World to measure the line of the old wall to get the length of the body for the squid as the mural has been brought forward into the room and making the body quite a bit shorter.  I will need to extend the body back, which is really a complete repaint of said body. I have been talking to the Maintenance Dept regarding a scaffold platform being made available and looking at paints and trying to match colours using a book of swatches. 

Body before building work

Body after the building work

This afternoon I popped over to the Forest of Birds aviary to add a sign that got left off one of the ID displays when I replaced a few of them last week. The birds in the warm aviary house were active and noisy with various melodic calls and songs filling the air. And sadly, as is usual, a high proportion of the people who walk in go through without stopping and really seeing all that there is in there; so many little treasures of feathers. They leave muttering that there was nothing to see when there are at least 18 species and numerous individuals all around them.

It's now quite busy with people outside, being half term the number of visitors has gone up this week, despite the drizzly grey cold weather which is good to see. 

Back with the squid; I settled on my colour choices for the mural and wall and sent my order to Maintenance. In Bug World I used a piece  of string, cut to the length of the squid body, and marked where it would go round the walls back from the new head position. I also traced the tail fluke to save time drawing it on the wall later. More discussions with Benn from the Estates Dept, Mark from Bug World and Eddie from Maintenance regarding what needs still to be done to the walls and tanks to finish that side of the job off before I can start my work on the actual mural.

Hoping the paints will be delivered tomorrow so I can get the work underway. The builders said they hoped to be finished sometime in the morning, if all goes well, I should be able to start drawing up the alterations after that and maybe even slap some paint on. 

Making Signs

After last night's lashing of wind and rain the zoo is bathed in beautiful clear sunshine today. But I can't go out and enjoy that yet.. I have the signs to put together. The 21 ID signs that I printed yesterday now need to be made ready to go on show. For display both inside and out the preparation is pretty much the same. Once each paper sign is trimmed to the size required I then encapsulate it in plastic laminate.

We use two thicknesses of laminate, we usefully decribe to ourselves as Thick and Thin. The thicker is basically double the layer of laminate on both sides of the 'sleeve'; outdoor, long term and high 'use' signs get this laminate, which actually covers most signs. Many years ago the Graphics Dept invested in a good quality laminator and this has stood the test of time and use, over and over again, out lasting numerous cheaper models used by other departments.  I have hopes that one day we get to replace the method of using laminate, as it doesn't sit well with me being a relatively high use of plastic.

Once laminated the sign is then trimmed to size again, leaving a small border of laminate. Then certain signs need double sided sticky tape put on the back and once done they are good to go and I can take another little walk around the zoo to replace them with the old, damaged, missing or faded signs.

Some signs are more involved than others, such as the ones we have for the tropical bird house called The Forest of Birds.  The ID signs are presented in a book form and ID's are sandwiched in laminate back to back so that they form the 'pages' of the book. When I laminate these signs I have to leave a border of about 3cms on one side, holes are punched into this border and metal eyelets are hammered into place over these holes to stop them ripping. The sign is then threaded onto the two U-bolts  standing proud on a backing board and the book is done. Today I had 8 of these 'pages' to put together.

I finished all my cutting trimming and banging holes and eyelets in by lunchtime, so this afternoon I can  put them all up.

All signs were put up with no problems, even the Forest of Bird IDs were installed without the usual hassle of awkward nuts not going back onto the U bolts properly. Whilst out I took photo's of the giant squid mural.... there's a slight hitch in the way it has been put  back together, nothing can be done now, it just means there's a lot more work involved in patching it up than was planned.

Whilst I was in the Reptile House I couldn't resist taking this photo.....

Life imitating art, eh?

Back at the Zoo

Today is my first day back since just prior to Christmas, so I spent this morning walking around the zoo checking all the identification signs and noting those that need replacing. At the same time I gave those that needed a quick clean a bit of a wipe over.

In the South American tapir paddock there is a set of four signs and I used to be able to climb up over the sturdy fence to get in to attend these sign, but these days my limbs can't quite manage the climb back out as there are no handy foot holds. So I found a keeper and waited whilst she finished sorting out the golden lion tamarins before unlocking the paddock to allow me access to the signs.
The advantage of climbing over the fence used to mean that on a day such as today I wouldn't have to wade through several inches of gooey mud, but as my older limbs aren't as agile as they used to be I now wade through the mud to get to the signs. Once cleaned I negotiated the mire again and locked the padlock on my way out. Good job I always wear walking boots to work.

On my walk around I get re-aquainted with the zoo and some of the staff I see. I had  a couple of lovely catch-up chats with staff that I knew and I met a volunteer called Pat who has been here for nearly four years each Monday, but I have never bumped into her before. We had a nice chat in the tropical bird house where she was stationed.

There is some work going on around the grounds on various exhibits - there's a bit of a revamp going on in Bug World which involves my giant squid mural; so I will need to do some work on that very soon to patch it up after the builders have finished. The gibbon island climbing frame is also having some structural work done.

By lunch time I had finished my 'sweep' and so the next job is to print out and replace those ID signs that I made notes of. So the afternoon was spent in front of the computer printing 21 new ID's finishing just before it was time to go home.

As it was my first day back at work since before Christmas I had my Secret Santa Christmas present waiting for me and a note saying 'Welcome Back Su' on my desk, which was lovely to come back to.