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.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Had a go at a T-shirt logo to raise awareness.

The Plight of the Butterfly

The butterfly theme continues. Inspired by the release of the butterfly stamps last month by the post office I have finally finished this drawing I have been working on for 2 years, 2 months. It probably took about 30 hours in total; I got quicker as time progressed as I learnt the tricks of AI. It shows the critically endangered and endangered species of UK butterflies as listed in Butterflies of Britain & Ireland by Michael Easterbrook in the top half of the hour glass and the wings of those that are extinct in the bottom. The large blue is flying up from the pile in the bottom half because it has been reintroduced since extinction. I spent hours on the wings of the large copper and mazarine blue, the first to become extinct, which are mostly obscured in the final drawing! This is A4 size and not as shown here.

Poor summers aren't just annoying

The poor UK summers aren’t just annoying they are a potential disaster with some of our rarest butterflies on the brink of extinction. An article, Washout 2012, in the summer edition of the Butterfly Conservation magazine prompted me to finish this drawing I’ve been working on, periodically for some months. It represents the potential demise of all our UK butterflies by showing one of the more common species, the peacock, dissolving into a puddle.