Sunday, September 20, 2009

Day at the Zoo

The other week my boyfriend was in town, we did lots of fun things like going to some galleries and seeing the Star Wars exhibition at Scienceworks. Yes, we’re both big nerds! We also went to the zoo. One of the highlights of that day was seeing a duck swimming innocently in the tiger’s enclosure, then moments later being snapped up, plucked and eaten for lunch. Well, I suppose ‘highlight’ is not quite the right word (sorry, duck!), but it was pretty exciting.


Being the lovely guy that he is, Leigh anticipated that the duck would get eaten so he took a ‘before’ shot. At this time, the tiger was not out on display yet, but was about to come out.


The bird was swimming in the water when the tiger came back out, and within seconds the tiger leapt into the water, splashed around and snapped up the helpless thing. Well, that’s what you get for swimming in the tiger pen! We asked the zookeeper if this sort of thing happened often and she said pretty much any bird that goes in there has a slim chance of making it out alive. They even catch and eat peacocks that go into their enclosure.



The tiger is a young male Sumatran tiger.


We went on to my favourite part of the zoo… the bears, of course! This beautiful fella was lying right next to the glass. He was huge, but looked so soft and cuddly. He would occasionally lift his foot up and press against the wall.


Look at that smile! He must have been having some beary nice dreams. *chuckle*


I’ve never been up so close to get a good view of a bear’s paw. It was huge! I love the little tufts of fur inbetween the padded bits. And check out those claws!


And here we are all tuckered out after our zoo trip! We have more photos, but the tiger and bear ones were my favourites. Only a few days ago I got another free zoo pass, so I will probably go again very soon and take my sketchbook with me.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Numbers, croc teeth and one lovely lady

WHEW! Busy busy busy busy busy. All of these are Photoshop, with the exception of the lady, who was painted with gouache on pastel paper.

Illustre was great! So much wonderful work. I met some really awesome illustrators and designers from NMIT and met some people from the industry too. I even managed to sell a few pieces and win an award! Wooohoo!!

Best of all though, I met someone who was very interested in my work. And I am going to see them on Tuesday and show them my portfolio. So I am very excited and super nervous as well, but it's so cool. I am one very happy illustrator right now!!

Will post more soon, but for now, back to work!