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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Sketch (2 Viewers)

Yet to see one here, judging from your thread I reckon France gets the spring migrants about 4 weeks ahead of Sweden, unfair head start in my humble opinion;)
Blackcap page is superb, buzzing with life and suppleness. So very well seen and drawn, thanks for posting...

Interesting new magazine, looks mouthwatering and sure to be unavailable of the shelves here in Sweden...
 
Exciting news for me - the Bird Fair team have invited me to be the guest artist demonstrator for their "Spotlight On..." event. Each year they choose a different artist to demonstrate a painting from start to finish in front of an audience - in just one hour. That last bit is slightly scary as my paintings usually take a good deal longer than that! Never mind, I'm up for the challenge. Previous artists have been Chris Rose, Ian Lewington, Bruce Pearson, Peter Partington and Darren Woodhead, so I'm in very good company. It will be on the Saturday lunchtime in the events marquee, so if that's your day for Bird Fair - come on down.
 
fantastic Jackie congratulations! burrrr....I'm way too shy in front of others to do that, can hardly draw if someone else is around... even just out sketching.
 
I usually attend on the Friday, Jackie. I spend at least a couple of hours in the Art marquee browsing through sketchbooks - this is heaven for me. Anyway, I shall call at your stand. I'm after a Great Grey Shrike portrait, by the way, so I'll be doing extra browsing this year!

Russ
 
You'll love it Jackie, though it can be stressful painting in front of groups of people - just take some nurofen with you just in case - last time I painted at a public thing I had a terrible headache.
 
You'll love it Jackie, though it can be stressful painting in front of groups of people - just take some nurofen with you just in case - last time I painted at a public thing I had a terrible headache.

Good tip, Nick - and I think a nice glass of wine afterwards might be quite therapeutic too!!! Seriously, I'm looking forward to it. I'm used to painting in public and doing talks and demos for art or wildlife groups. The timescale's a little shorter than usual but as long as I'm well prepared I should be ok.
 
On the subject of painting in public, what's the best/funniest/most ridiculous comment any of you have experienced while wielding a paintbrush? One of my favourites was someone who heaped praise my sketch of a moorhen and then said "What is it?". I hope they were just unfamiliar with the species rather than being unable to recognise it from the sketch, but you never know!

Another favourite was the occasion when two young girls were watching me sketch. One suggested I should charge £19.99 for the sketch, whereupon the other fell about in peals of laughter and said "No one's going to pay that much for it!". That gave me a laugh too.
 
I often paint outside, but usually there are very few people about to see, and most of them are either birdwatchers or just plain ignorant of what I'm doing. In Lanzarote, I was sketching trumpeter finches through my scope in the Timanfaya National Park, when all of a sudden two gun-wielding Guardia Civil appeared in front of me waving their fingers and shouting "no fotos!, no fotos!", trying to remember any Spanish I had (a few weeks before my first Spanish lesson) I replied, "no fotos! erm, dessiner, er pencil, aves, uccelli, birds, fincho trumpetero" and invited them to look through my scope, "ah Crows!" they exclaimed, laughed and walked off with a "no hay problema".

The only time I've ever painted at a bird fair (fête de la nature Seloncourt) also known as a little mushroom exhibition in a village hall. I had so many children trying to touch the painting, I nearly stabbed one with a pencil. The ones that always make me laugh are the ones that say they don't like what I do at all. In the words of the great Dr Frank 'n' Furter "I didn't make him, for YOU!" One at my Slimbridge exhibition thought he was talking to Andy Forkner, and told me how much he admired one of my owls (that wasn't mine) and how he thought that Mr Derry's modern crap was rubbish. Well, I was on my 4th glass of free wine at this point - after agreeing with him, and saying that I can do much better, getting more and more insults out of him, I finally let the penny drop (his wife had already understood - I just gave her a wink and a smile) and led him over to Andy where he bought the painting off him straight away. I wonder if it was him that came back a few weeks later and bought the only one I sold - (the cheapest one in there!)

Ah, people are fun sometimes.
 
Not quite the same but many years ago, when I was strictly an abstract painter, I went to opening night at a juried show at University of Rochester in New York. I and a friend of mine both had work in the show. It was my first professional opening.

So I was pretty excited. Then I stepped into the museum and saw one of my paintings off in the distance - hung upside down! I immediately went to a museum official and told them of the problem but they said that they couldn't do anything until after the opening. So all night long I watched the few people who were interested in it walk up and stare at it intently, I guess trying to get some meaning from it. I wanted to rush up and say: "It's upside down! It's upside down! Don't waste your time." Instead I sat there in agony. It did teach me to plaster the back of any future work with up and down arrows.

Like the two of you I've found that I actually tend to enjoy the critical comments. For some reason they just seem pleasantly funny and it's hard to take offense at them. What's more dispiriting is seeing the majority of people walk by nonchalantly as though there's not even anything to look at.

Not all comments are bad though. I'm not too knowledgeable abut geese. Last year I was doing a quick watercolor field sketch of what I thought was a graylag. I told that to someone who inquired about the watercolor and he told me he thought it was a Chinese goose. He was right.;)
 
main problem is not assaulting anyone who goes "ooh and [he] [she] 's left-handed.."

this is very true! I'm amazed how many people still get surprised to see me with my left hand curled round a pencil scrawling away as though my hand's on backwards and just can't help themselves, they have to blurt it out! Ssssh, my left-handedness is a secret!

I suppose it stems from the idea that being left-handed is linked to being gifted, though I may be ok with drawing and painting, there are tons of stuff I'm crap at! And amongst the 'greats' of wildlife art, I can only think of Scott who was left-handed too. I suppose the fact I've actually looked and checked before shows that there is some interest in verifying a correlation between being sinister and being an artist - I really should start screaming 'ooooh, he uses his RIGHT hand! wow!'.

The other pet peeve is when people see me sketching from life or using my sketches to make a picture, they ask if I copy photos. I usually reply with a 'pardon, mon fron-say tres mo-vay' and they let me be.
 
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The best ones are the advice ones.

I had a guy say to me once, 'You know what's wrong with that owl don't you...' Always keen to learn I asked him to let me know. 'It's only got one eye...' he says. I explained that the owl had his head turned and that, at that angle, the other eye was hidden from view. He emphatically informed me that; 'You never see 'em like that' and off he trotted...

I don't think the painting was that bad!

Mike
 
The best ones are the advice ones.

I had a guy say to me once, 'You know what's wrong with that owl don't you...' Always keen to learn I asked him to let me know. 'It's only got one eye...' he says. I explained that the owl had his head turned and that, at that angle, the other eye was hidden from view. He emphatically informed me that; 'You never see 'em like that' and off he trotted...

I don't think the painting was that bad!

Mike

That would have caused a scene had it happened to me, I'm obnoxious when I know I'm right! Just ask anyone in my family I've argued with! Not related to painting, but yesterday I was chatting with a guy I'd have rather slapped than spoken to. He was a local hunter, but that wasn't the problem, it was all the crap he came out with within half an hour of talking. What I haven't entirely managed to block out yet include:

"Grebes look like ducks don't they, that's why I shot one". (Protected species, not on the game list)

"There was a bittern here last year, I had my gun but decided not to shoot it". (As though the choice was his to make!)

"There is a rare species of grey swan here sometimes" (I pointed out that they were the youngsters, he called upon his experience of being older and told me it was impossible as they were the same size)

"There is a problem with Marsh Harriers here as they take the cats from the gardens" (he only knew there were Marsh Harriers there because I told him that the big chestnut and grey thing flying in front of us was one)

"So is Purple Heron just passage 'game'?" (that was the word he used - 'gibier')

"There are no fish in here anymore" followed by "There are some big fish in here". (Lucky he didn't see/recognise the cormorants flying past - that's enough of a debate with people who aren't ignorant of ecology)

"Did you draw that, it's great. What is it?" (a cuckoo)

"I saw two cuckoos yesterday"

"You're from England, I don't know where that is, I have a map of the world (Uncle Bulgaria!) - The Channel, what's that???" (maybe I should take French nationality, though I do suspect I missed the opportunity to perform experiments on him with an anal probe à la little green men from England)

It was the nicest "Au revoir" I ever said! I made sure I went off in the other direction.

Sorry to hijack your thread to rant Jackie!
 
"Grebes look like ducks don't they, that's why I shot one". (Protected species, not on the game list)

"There was a bittern here last year, I had my gun but decided not to shoot it".

"So is Purple Heron just passage 'game'?" (that was the word he used - 'gibier')

Sorry to hijack your thread to rant Jackie!

After putting up with those comments, you deserve to rant as much and wherever you choose. Sometimes I'm really, really glad my French is as bad as it is - it stops me from understanding anything I wouldn't want to hear!
 
Haven't posted anything for ages - been over burdened with illustrations - so here's a quick Little Owl sketch, seen overlooking allotments. Trouble with allotments is that people keep working on them and scaring the wildlife away; most inconsiderate! Hence only one sketch... but I hope you enjoy.
 

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