My Top 5 Interesting Animal Poos
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...
My Art Journey
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|The Saviour of her Species
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....
How the Black Robin became the rarest bird in the world
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...
What do Antennae do?
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...
How to make a heated drawing board
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...
Natural History Illustration 101: Drawing a hare
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,...
Natural History Illustration 101: Drawing Animals
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...
What is a Tizzie-Whizie?
Have you heard of the Tizzie-Whizie? 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...