5. Capybara poo At number 5 is capybara poo. Cabybaras are the largest rodents in the world and super cute. They are related to guinea pigs but much much larger. Capybaras are native to South America and live a semi-aquatic lifestyle. They are herbivores meaning they...
I started drawing in 2019 as a mindful activity to reduce stress. I followed a Kingfisher tutorial and got completely hooked. I had no idea about all the equipment required for professional drawings, special professional grade (and expensive) pencils, the right paper,...
Old Blue was now 9 years of age, old for a species that has an average life span of 4 years. Shortly after being transferred to Managere island one of Blue and Yellows’ nests was destroyed in a storm. The robins built a replacement nest and Blue laid two more eggs....
Black robins are native to a group of islands off the East coast of New Zealand called the Chatham Islands. The islands were originally called Rekohu (“Misty Sun”) by the Moriori people. For thousands of years the black robins flourished on the forested Islands. There...
Antennae, we’ve seen them on insects but what do they actually do? It turns out they are a pretty amazing piece of anatomy. They connect into the brain and have the ability to augment senses like navigation, orientation, smell and even taste!What are Antennae? In the...
Why use a heated drawing board? For coloured pencil artists, a heated drawing board melts the pencils making it quicker to layer on surfaces like pastelmat and makes pencils easier to blend. It works brilliantly with neopastels on drafting film for smoothing and...
What is rendering? The final week of the Natural History Illustration course involved rendering an animal of our choice. Rendering is the process of adding the fine details of colour, fur, feathers and shading. For this course we were only allowed to use graphite,...
I recently completed a fantastic course, Drawing Nature, Science and Culture: Natural History 101. It’s an online course run by the University of Newcastle in Australia on the edX platform and is aimed at artists who want to improve their observational skills in order...
The tizzie-whizie is a very rare creature found only in Bowness Bay, Lake Windemere in the UK. It is described as having the body of a hedgehog, the tail of a squirrel or fox, insect-like wings and antennae. It was first discovered by a Bowness boatman in the 1900s who, in 1906, took the only known photograph of a tizzie-whizzie, shown below, at Louis Herbert’s Photographic Studio.
Shortly after this photograph was taken, the tizzie-whizze jumped off the table and escaped out of a window. Not only can tizzie-whizzies fly, they can also swim underwater which makes them very evasive creatures. They have a very faint cry which can be heard best with your ear at water level. If you want to be lucky enough to see one, try taking a packet of ginger biscuits with you which is reportedly how this one was captured for the photograph.
There are no descriptions of the colour of the tizzie-whizzie but we can make some assumptions based on the way it was described and the colouring of British wild life. The description of the tail as ‘squirrel or fox like’ suggests that the tail was an orange colour similar to a red squirrel or fox. The body is described as the body of a hedgehog with no further remarks on unusual colouring so we can assume the colouring of a British hedgehog. The antennae of insects usually contain the same pigment as their body. The antennae look dark in the photograph and probably contain the same dark brown pigments found in the hair and quills of the hedgehog.
The anatomy of the tizzie-whizzie is interesting. What is the purpose of the antennae? How have the wings evolved? Why does it have a long tail? These are questions I will be delving into over a series of blog articles.
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5. Capybara poo At number 5 is capybara poo. Cabybaras are the largest rodents in the world and super cute. They are related to guinea pigs but much much larger. Capybaras are native to South America and live a semi-aquatic lifestyle. They are herbivores meaning they...
I started drawing in 2019 as a mindful activity to reduce stress. I followed a Kingfisher tutorial and got completely hooked. I had no idea about all the equipment required for professional drawings, special professional grade (and expensive) pencils, the right paper,...
Old Blue was now 9 years of age, old for a species that has an average life span of 4 years. Shortly after being transferred to Managere island one of Blue and Yellows’ nests was destroyed in a storm. The robins built a replacement nest and Blue laid two more eggs....
Black robins are native to a group of islands off the East coast of New Zealand called the Chatham Islands. The islands were originally called Rekohu (“Misty Sun”) by the Moriori people. For thousands of years the black robins flourished on the forested Islands. There...
Antennae, we’ve seen them on insects but what do they actually do? It turns out they are a pretty amazing piece of anatomy. They connect into the brain and have the ability to augment senses like navigation, orientation, smell and even taste!What are Antennae? In the...
Why use a heated drawing board? For coloured pencil artists, a heated drawing board melts the pencils making it quicker to layer on surfaces like pastelmat and makes pencils easier to blend. It works brilliantly with neopastels on drafting film for smoothing and...
What is rendering? The final week of the Natural History Illustration course involved rendering an animal of our choice. Rendering is the process of adding the fine details of colour, fur, feathers and shading. For this course we were only allowed to use graphite,...
I recently completed a fantastic course, Drawing Nature, Science and Culture: Natural History 101. It’s an online course run by the University of Newcastle in Australia on the edX platform and is aimed at artists who want to improve their observational skills in order...