I’m one of those wildlife nuts that simply can’t get enough of animals. Some wildlife nuts won’t step into a zoo but I think that’s a shame. Some zoos are utter rubbish and bad environments to house cockroaches, let alone lions and chimps (Cairo – been there, done that and been disgusted) but most zoos try to do the right thing. For some zoos, the right thing is not only to try to give the animals as good an environment as possible, given the artificial constraints, but to also blend commercial realities with the real reasons zoos should exist, and those are of course research, conservation and rehabilitation.

My local one is the Adelaide Zoo. It’s right in the heart of the city so it will probably always be the size it is and yet it looks fantastic. The director is Dr Chris West and is a good bloke, a visionary and a leader in conservation. He also oversees Monarto Zoo, Australia’s largest open plains zoo and the venue for an exhibition of mine and Leigh Rust’s chimpanzee paintings a couple of years ago. We were lucky enough to have the exhibition opened by none other than that beautiful person Dr Jane Goodall, UN Messenger for Peace and Dame of the Birtish Empire.

I often go to these zoos and wander through all the exhibits gathering material for my art and seeing the great things they are doing. I spend a lot of time in Africa too and no zoo can match the wild, but Adelaide and Monarto Zoos do a great job. On one particular morning a couple of years ago, I sat watching the orangutans for ages. They were Pusung and Karta. Pusung looked particularly sad all morning. Maybe that’s just his demeanor but he certainly tugged at my heartstrings. I created the following portrait “I just want to go home” in scratchboard. It is done entirely with a fibreglass brush (mentioned in previous posts) and sandpaper and coloured with inks and some coloured pencils and for anyone interested, I’m including some closeups. The piece is 8″ x 10″ and I’ve aimed to get as much of that sorrow that I saw into it as possible.

Pusung died three months after I sat there that morning.

And here’s a progress shot before any colour was added

I’ve recently had three artworks in the Victor Harbor Art Show, the largest show in our state I believe. There were over 1,500 paintings and the judge awarded a winner and 12 “Highly Commended” awards. This piece, “Homeless” won one of those “Highly Commended”s. I understand that it’s a fairly confronting image and highly unlikely to sell, but my aim was to tell a story with it and create an “It could happen to you too” moment. Let’s face it, with the recent devastation in Haiti and Chile, that too could happen anywhere and it’s one of my goals to educate people not to judge the homeless and disadvantaged but in fact to help and be part of the solution. I have a friend who has volunteered to teach English in Chile. Her stint was cancelled when the earthquake hit but that made her even more determined to go, and she’s there now making a difference. Congratulations to all those people who would rather help make a difference to the disadvantaged than bitch and moan about life in our own affluent societies.

Ngoma Zanga is a restaurant in Livingstone, Zambia, close to where Victoria Falls are. It’s billed as the best traditional African restaurant (in Livingstone? in Zambia? in Africa?). I won’t argue – I was stuffed when I left. The food was absolutely delicious. The staff all wore traditonal tribal costume and paint and one waitress in particular caught my eye. I buttered her up by saying she was the most beautiful person I had seen for ages and asked if I could take a photograph. Well, who could refuse my boyish charm?!

This is scratchboard on a 16″ x 20″ Ampersand board and though it ended well, it caused me no small amount of frustration. I tried two different styles for the skin, I kept getting the eyes offline (which looks silly if you don’t fix things) and the material took about ten attempts to get to where it is now. In fact with the material, I used sandpaper to rub ink off but I went too far so I had to re-ink with diluted Indian ink. I had to keep adding more layers and then I created the texture simply by dipping a paper towel into a strong mixture of ink and water and then dabbing it on with the paper.

Ngoma Zanga means ‘My Drum’. She could be a drummer but I named this after the restaurant as I had such a great night there and I love the traditional clothes.

The hat and beads were challenges and took a long time but I got there in the end, but with lots of patience.

There were many kids around but this one in particular followed me at a distance. He was too cool to come up and speak and when I tried to get close to him, he moved away. I assume the sunglasses were a gift from some other tourist, they were so scratched I doubt he would be able to see properly out of them, but he sure looked the part. Obviously I can’t help but wonder how he goes as he grows up. He seemed to be about eight years old.

8″ x 10″
Cool Kid from Langa

On my recent trip to Africa I saw many of these spectacular birds and took hundreds of photos of them (to go with the thousands of other photos I took). They would be out in the wild but also around the campsites of Namibia picking up the trash like all good scavengers (at least they didn’t invade the tents like the jackals did).

In this case I wanted to create a real sense of depth to my image so I used a variety of tools including sandpaper, fibre glass brush, scalpel, tungsten scribe, pen, coloured pencil (black) and diluted Indian ink, focusing everything into the middle where the actual bird is. I contemplated colouring it but since they don’t have a great deal of colour other than the red beak I decided against it as I kind of like the black and white look. It’s 8″ x 10″ and I’ve done an animated ‘gif’ to show the process through a few of the stages. I’m also showing a couple of close ups.

Here’s the ‘gif’ showing the process. If it’s not moving for you, just click it and it should.