2nd place in Sea Animal Portraits competition!

My turtle illustration got second place in another deviantArt competition! I should really have come fourth, but two people ahead of me got disqualified for not following all the competition rules. Ah well, I'll take it :-)

I now have an agent!

I am excited to announce that I am now a member of New Zealand illustrator Sandra Morris's illustration agency! http://www.illustration.co.nz/haslimeier.html

Botanical illustration class - month 3

Drawing leucodendrons using coloured pencils.

Miranda Shorebird Centre - Hand lettering

Just playing with some hand lettering with words that came to mind while at the Shorebird Centre a couple of weekends ago. 

Nature Journaling course

Last weekend I attended a nature journaling course, run by Sandra Morris, at the Miranda Shorebird Centre. It was the first time I had done nature journaling and it was a lot of fun. Over the two days we spent the mornings down at the shell banks observing the local wildlife and sketching them while looking through telescopes. Some of the many birds we spotted were spoonbills, wrybills, caspian terns, mallards and pied stilts. 

In the afternoons we went for walks looking for plant specimens to take back to the centre to draw.

The photos here show the stunning scenery, plants specimens, sketches, using the telescopes and photos I took of the birds through my telescope.

Botanical illustration class - month 2

Bamboo (left) and freesia bud with cross section of flower. Drawn using a 0.05mm black ink pen using the stipple technique.

2nd place in Underwater Life contest

I've just found out that I got 2nd place in an underwater life contest through deviantArt with my latest turtle illustration!

It's hardly a huge deal but it will give me a few features of my work and a little more recognition within the site. And it gives me an excuse to write another blog entry which are pretty few and far between really.

Better than a hole in the head!

See the other winners here.

Botanical illustration class - month 1

Graphite leaves drawn using 2H, 4H and B pencils as part of my botanical illustration class with Sandra Morris.