Raymond Sheppard Exhibition review

Wildlife Art Gallery frontage

On 21st June 2013 my wife and I visited the Wildlife Art Gallery exhibition of Raymond Sheppard, and Ralph Thompson's work. Our first surprise was that the Gallery had moved next-door from its previous position! The new space is open and allows lots of pieces to be exhibited on the walls.
 

One wall with the book on an easel

You can see the brilliantly produced book "Ramond Sheppard: Capturing the moment" placed on the side. I bought a copy at the previous exhibition and it wasn't until crossing the road afterwards and having a cup of tea, when I browsed the book and found my name in the credits. I was so proud!

Andrew Haslen's idea to make a 'collage' of sketches works well

On visiting Christine Sheppard once I saw all these 'scrapbook' pieces of original Sheppard artwork, but I think what Andrew Haslen (and I believe, his wife, whose name I don't know unfortunately) have done with these in framing them together works exceedingly well. It looks so much more powerful in the original - here's the picture from the website (borrowed with permission)

Farm 'collage'

There were some studies I don't remember having seen before so I had another lovely surprise. These bird studies are partially coloured with pencil, I think. I was only taking these pictures for my reference and as you can see there were lots of reflections on the glass, but scroll down for better versions.

Too many reflections!

Ditto

Studies from the Bird House

These studies include the 'Hodgsons Barbet', the African 'White-throated Bulbul', the 'Indian Roller' and the 'Nepal Hill Myna'. You can read all about Hodgson on the Natural History website, and a Google Image search for the Indian Roller is worth doing just for the colours! There's a fascinating article on the Hill Mynah family on Wikipedia with a nice map of their differences

Red-rumped green toucanet from Ecuador

The above are studies of, what London Zoo obviously called 'Red-rumped green toucanet' - I imagine Sheppard would have read the labels. They are also known as Crimson-rumped Toucanets.

The Crimson-rumped Toucanet is not the only species of Aulacorhynchus toucanet whose rump is red - but it is the only red-rumped member of the genus in northern South America, because of this, it is unlikely to be confused with any other members in its genus. Crimson-rumped Toucanets are fairly common in humid montane forest from southwestern Venezuela south to southwestern Ecuador. A noisy, inquisitive, social bird, this species is usually found in pairs or small groups foraging for fruits, invertebrates, small vertebrate prey in the canopy.

The above quote comes from Cornell University's Neotropical Birds page where you can even listen to one! Click the above link.

Pen & ink of dog

I love pen and ink drawings so got close up to this one of a dog. Go and spend some time having a browse of clearer pictures at the Wildlife Art Gallery's site and once again thanks to Andrew for permission to use some of the pictures on this blog.

Elephant