Marwell Wildlife had chosen my Oxpecker bird design, although asked if I could change the birds to Humboldt penguins and to include their local celebrity, Ralph the penguin.
During Ralph's annual moult, he loses his feathers quicker
than the other penguins, exposing his skin to the elements and for the past couple
of years, Ralph has had to wear a wetsuit to protect him from the sun. Because of this Ralph has become bit of a celebrity, 'the penguin
with the wetsuit', and for this reason Marwell wanted to include him in the
design, a 'Where’s Wally' approach.
I got straight to work redesigning
the rhino with Humboldt penguins in mind and Marwell Wildlife gave me the go ahead with my new design (above)
The studio in which all the artists and the rhinos congregated was in the Marlands shopping centre in the centre of Southampton, it was an open studio where members of the public could come in to watch the artists at work and to ask questions.
I came slightly late to
the project so the studio was pretty much full of artists busily at work on
their rhinos. After get acquainted with the space and the rather large blank
canvas of the rhino sculpture, I set to work.
Once started, I began to realise the enormous amount of work that lay before me and I encountered a few problems......
The first problem was my intricate style of drawing on a full scale rhino; I started drawing as I usually would in
my small detailed style and drawing the penguins no bigger than paper clips,
thinking this would be alright. How wrong was I?! I spent hours on just a small
part of the lower leg, it looked impressive, but as my girlfriend pointed out to me, this would take me forever to finish and my rhino wouldn't be ready in time for the trail. I needed to draw the penguins a lot larger, so I had to start all over again! So if it wasn't for her I would still be painting penguins today!
Covering the whole rhino with all those
penguins took its time, drawing them in the curves and contours of the
rhino and making sure they all connected was a real head scratcher.
Once drawn out I could set about painting the rhino.
To be continued in part 3
Once drawn out I could set about painting the rhino.
To be continued in part 3
Read How I spent my summer part 1 here