Dorset Nightlife

This year I’ve seen scarlet tigers, pink elephants, emeralds, two ghosts and a shark in my garden! It isn’t due to alcoholic excess; I’m actually hooked on moths and their incredible biodiversity. There’s the privet hawkmoth built like a miniature jump-jet only, as a moth, it is pretty sizable filling the length and breadth of a large human palm. Then there’s the equally big contortionist, the poplar hawkmoth that rests with its hind wings in front of its fore wings. The camouflage experts include the bufftip that looks like a bit of peeled off bark, the scorched wing that mimics a dead leaf and the Chinese character rather incongruously named because it looks like a bird dropping. We have also been visited by day flying exhibitionists, the garden and scarlet tigers and the awesome hummingbird hawkmoths that never seem to rest, zipping from flower to flower. In total this year, there have been 111 species trapped in my light-box in just 19 nights, almost double the number of species of butterfly I’ve seen in the UK in a lifetime. 

From Ammonites to Dinosaurs

Having moved to Dorset earlier this year, I spent my 50^th Birthday at the Dinosaur museum in Dorchester, apparently the only UK museum dedicated totally to the subject. We went to entertain my young nephew and niece but I came away totally absorbed by the discovery of the dinosaurs and how big an impact this must have had at the time on religion in particular in the early C19th. I was also surprised that a woman, a poor woman, had succeeded in being a pioneer. ‘She sells sea shells on the seashore’ is a lot better known than Mary Anning, who is thought to be the source of the tongue twister. It presumably refers to the ammonites she and her family collected to sell to tourists to keep them from starvation although these were often referred to as snake stones in her day. They actually remind me far more of sea horses which frequent the other end of the Dorset coast. The ammonites lead to far greater things and not one but several complete fossilized dinosaur skeletons. Most of us involved in scientific research can only dream of a dinosaur moment but should rest assured discovering an ammonite still requires great skill and can make an important and very satisfying find. 

BSID 2014

This drawing is inspired by my recent visit to Newcastle for the British Society for Investigative Dermatology Meeting. The annual dinner was held in the Great Hall at the Discovery Museum, a magnificent venue:
http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/discovery/venue-hire.html

The drawing took me as long as it took the electricity board to fix a power cut in our village this morning. So much for catching up on work after the Easter break!

Inspired by Blickling, Norfolk

A long train journey to Newcastle stimulated this drawing based on a photo I took during a visit to Blickling, a National Trust property in Norfolk several years back. The iron gate made such a wonderful shadow in the sunshine and I have been wanting to try and draw it ever since.

Garden map

I've just moved house and have a wonderful landscaped garden. For my first year here I need to observe and record what is already present before deciding what to change (if anything). So here is my draft map with icons for the plants I have managed to identify.

Fish: Stick to eating them

One of the perks of being self employed is not being constrained to 9-5pm which means you can go to the farmers’ market and the fish market. With the help of ‘fish, the complete fish & seafood companion’ by Mitch Tonks, I’ve been exploring the wide diversity of tasty fish to eat. The gurnard is rather a handsome creature and the curves inspired me to try and draw it. My conclusions from this experiment are 1) cooking & eating them is easier and 2) I better put my identification guide to fish in Great Britain and Ireland on hold.

Drawing a rainbow in AI

When I started learning AI, I soon learnt to use the gradient tool because I was involved in writing a photodermatology review that required a figure of an electromagnetic spectrum. This inspired me to draw a rainbow for fun but I just couldn't find a way to do it with the gradient tool. Finally I realised last night I knew how to do it. First apply a radial gradient to a circle. Next draw a rainbow shape with two circles and a rectangle using the shape builder tool. Then finally make a clipping mask and there is the rainbow.

Dolphin skin

I joined the BBC documentary 'Dolphins; Spy in the Pod' at the point when David Tennant mentioned that Dolphins shed the outer most layer of the skin every three hours. I immediately wanted to see the scientific evidence and found a paper in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology by Hicks et al in 1985 which does indeed suggest a very fast sloughing rate. The microscope images look fascinating but sadly they are in black and white and low power. Back then it was so expensive to publish in colour so we rarely did.