I had a great time participating in a live sketching tutorial with natural history artist Christine Elder, as part of the Birds Caribbean Endemic Bird Festival this month. After an engaging and informative presentation from Trinidadian parrot expert Aliya Hosein, over 100 people around the world got out their sketch books and pencils for a synchronised sketching exercise! It was a great way to make time to do some art, with days and weeks becoming less structured while working at home due to COVID-19 lockdown. Hope to join in for some more sessions, as Christine offers tutorials on a diverse range of plant and animal subjects and offers some great advice for beginners and more experienced artists alike!
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This piece has been adapted from an article that originally appeared in the Quarterly Bulletin of the TTFNC. More pictures and photographs by the other artists are included in the original article. Despite the name, the El Socorro Centre for Wildlife Conservation is in fact situated near Freeport, in central Trinidad, surrounded by citrus and teak plantations and – at this time of year - under the constant threat of bush fires.
We were treated to a full tour of the property, which supports a fantastic variety of Heliconia plants, some sweet citrus (with which we filled our hats and pockets!) and two ponds teaming with life. On returning to the main house, we dispersed in different directions with our pencils, paints and cameras. Ricardo set the photographers the task of taking shots that minimised the presence of the enclosures – tricky to achieve given that the majority of residents were unavoidably in some kind of cage or vivarium, but Jeffrey and Kamal accepted the challenge happily! Many of the animals we met are destined for release to the wild – including their latest arrival, a baby ocelot, born at the centre just a couple of weeks ago. We were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of this beautiful creature; she will be kept with minimal human contact and fed live prey to maximise her chance of successful release.
A few watercolours that I have scanned in from over the years... most of them have been sent to friends as greetings cards at some point!
My friend Felicity writes a brilliant blog on the topics of animal behaviour and cognition for Scientific American, titled 'Not Bad Science'. When she asked me if I could provide some artwork for her 'thumbnail' image, I took up the challenge and came up with this brush and ink African grey parrot close-up. This particular species of parrot is famous for its intelligence and has been used to demonstrate advanced cognitive abilities in a non-human animal. |
ArtI am a keen artist in my spare time. I currently run a natural history art group within the TTFNC. Archives
October 2023
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