Squirrel Photograph

Today's photograph is a Squirrel that I took in Yellowstone National Park in August.
I hope to be back to sharing my artwork by the end of the week.

Wolf Continued

I'm almost there with the wolf. His bottom jaw needs to be altered at the left side (his right) and I need to finish his fur.

The squirrels are back so the dogs have resumed their hobby of squirrel watching, unfortunately they've forgotten that it's a quiet hobby. The first one to catch sight of a squirrel barks to tell the second , who then barks to tell the third and so on. The squirrels don't worry at all, in fact I'm waiting for them to start barking back.

National Exhibition of Wildlife Art

I finally completed my squirrel and got her framed ready to meet the deadline for the last handing in day for the NEWA exhibition.

NEWA is the National Exhibition of Wildlife Art and is the biggest wildlife art exhibition outside London.

The 2007 website will open on Saturday 21st July and will showcase the work of all the artists gaining entry to the show. All work will be available for purchase through the website.

http://www.newa-uk.com/

The exhibition is held at Gordale Garden Centre on the Wirral, if you like wildlife art and are in the area it will be well worth visiting.

The exhibition runs from the 20th July - 5th August from 9.30am - 6pm every day.

I entered my meerkat 'Sentry Duty' and of course my squirrel 'On the Edge', and have had my fingers crossed that at least one of them got selected.

This morning I found that the list of exhibitors for 2007 was posted on the website. Although I hardly dared look, you cannot imagine my excitement when I saw my name included. I don't know if just one or both have been selected, but I can't wait for the preview evening on Thursday.

Last weekend I attended my second workshop held by Mike Sibley. This time we were studying mist, water and reflections, it was a great two days of which I will write more later.

Living on the Edge

I'm lucky enough to have a quite a large garden which is visited by a wide variety of animals and birds.

We buy bird food by the sackful in the winter to stock our feeders, which as well as attracting many birds also attracts the grey squirrels.

I know many people regard these as pests, but we don't have the native red squirrels in my area so I don't need to feel bad about being fond of my grey's.

One female squirrel who I think is feeding young, is particularly tame and feeds right outside my window. She is easy to photograph and after I had taken several nice shots of her I decided it was time to put pencil to paper.

I intend to call this 'Living on the Edge' partly because she is balanced right on the edge of a feeding dish, high above the ground, and partly because they are in conflict with man throughout some of their range.

I need to add here that the collies are much less fond of the squirrels, and tell me in no uncertain terms that I should let them out to play with them. In turn the squirrels have come to recognise the dogs can't reach them and stand there making rude squirrel gestures.

I have recently received some new paper to try. This is Mellotex which comes in various weights and shades of white.

I ordered the 340gms as I like a fairly heavy paper and this is ultra white.

After my Meerkat I am still in graphite mode so decided to continue to use graphite with the addition of Graphitints.

The graphitints are made by Derwent and are watersoluble coloured graphite. They can be used dry to give a hint of colour, or wet if you want a brighter effect.

They are manufactured in 24 colours but not all of them are lightfast so I restrict my use of them to the ones classed as lightfast.

The size will be about 18 x 14 inches and I am using a HB mechanical pencil and graphitints in cool brown, dark indigo and cloud grey.