Wednesday 28 September 2011

Ghosts of Gone Birds // All Tropical Comp (Part Three)







































Last but by no means least this is the Mauritius Blue Pigeon native to (rather obviously) Mauritius, they became extinct in the 1830's. It would seem that we are not so responsible for this one – although habitat destruction and hunting are factors – with the blame for their extinction largely goes to Macaques. I wish all pigeons looked like this, Trafalgar Square sure would be a more interesting place if it were so.

Monday 26 September 2011

Ghosts of Gone Birds // All Tropical Competition (Part Two)







































I liked it so much I decided to enter it twice. This happy little fella is the Pink Headed Duck thought to have been extinct in the wild since the 1950's orginally hailing from India. I might try to fit in another bird before the end of the week but I need to find another one which has a good but limited selection of colours in it's plumage, in order for it to work with the design and limits of the competition. Any suggestions??

Friday 23 September 2011

South East London Zine Fest is coming!!!

The Dinosaurs of Crystal Palace park wanted to let you know so the Megalosaurus posed for this illustration for me. It's at the Amersham Arms in New Cross on the 12 November and Monster Emporium Press are helping to organise it. 

You can apply for a table here and follow the plans as the come to fruition here

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Ghosts of Gone Birds // All Tropical Competition


Ghost of Gone Birds is a really interesting project that commissions a variety of artists to create responses to extinct bird species on order to promote conservation of endangered species and to "breathe artistic life back into" those already lost. The following from the All Tropical website explains in more detail:
The organisers of the Ghosts of Gone Birds project are raising a creative army for conservation through a series of multimedia exhibitions that breathe artistic life back into extinct bird species, celebrating their diversity through paintings & sculpture, talks & poetry, installations & live music.
The project presents a unique collection of originally commissioned artworks, literature and music from some of the UK’s leading contemporary artists, writers and performers including - Ralph Steadman, Sir Peter Blake, Rob Ryan, Billy Childish, Desmond Morris, Pete Fowler, Charming Baker, Jamie Hewlett, Kai and Sunny, Rebecca Jewell, Bruce Pearson, Olly and Suzi, Robert Gillmor, Dafila Scott and Jimi Goodwin - each one of them has adopted an extinct species and breathed life back into it through their creative talents (Jamie Hewlett from Gorillaz has a Hawaiian crow; Rob Ryan has the Stephen's Island wren; Holly Johnson went for liver birds, and Billy Childish the Reunion owl).
There is going to be an exhibition of the work at the Rochelle School, Shoreditch from the 2-23 November at which the T-Shirt that wins this competition will be sold.

There will be voting from the 7 October so I shall be calling on you all again when that comes around. 

I chose to illustrate the Glaucous Macaw, this little guy isn't officially recognised as extinct – although Wikipedia has the species listed in it's extinct birds page. The species originates from South America  but hasn't been spotted in the wild since 1960 and expeditions since then to try to find it have all failed. I felt it was a good choice to highlight the work of BirdLife's Preventing Extinctions Programme. Two very close relations of  the Glaucous Macaw are the Lear's Macaw and the Hyacinth Macaw are endangered and likely to go the same way as their cousin if something isn't done about the variety of threats to their survival. I love the subtle gradient of colour of this parrot from head to tail, but it's a shame to be only able to draw it from approximations and illustrations, it is particularly sad to see so many photographs of dead birds turn up in a search, when alive their faces are beautiful and full of so much character and charm.

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Vote CORLETT!! Don't Panic / Laurence King 20th Anniversary Poster Design Competition

2011 will forever be known as the year of competitions.

Here's another one for you. The challenged to create a poster to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Laurence King publishers of a fine selection of creative arts books. Please if you have a chance could you vote for me, i think if you are logged into Facebook you just have to hit the like button :). Thanks! xx