Here’s a voluptuous creature I found in my sketchbook this weekend (possibly inspired by the Ashmolean Museum’s exhibition of Great British Drawings that we went to see again.)
Just count ’em!
Apologies for the lack of updates. I hope this cheerful and talented lady makes up for it in some small way.
Nobody, I repeat, Nobody is to make any jokes at all, however slight, relating to the hippo-cratic oath.
This drawing was inspired by a trip to Whipsnade zoo. We saw the baby pygmy hippo, small (for a hippo) pink and wet, but this hippopotamus is of the “common” kind.
My sister’s a hypnotherapist, and so I’m giving the original to her. By the time you read this I’ll know whether she likes it or not, and we should know whether this post is a posthumous ‘potamus.
EDIT: Today I looked up “hippotherapy” on Wikipedia. And there really is such a thing.
I’ve been roundly admonished for not posting, so here’s a post. I’ve been working on this picture for a while, but not in any concentrated way!
I’m not sure what it means either — the drawing was largely random, whatever my brain felt like doing at the time until the sheet was full. For some reason there are no hippos in there at all.
It’s been really busy here, which is why I haven’t been posting much!
First there was the book (which you saw); and then Karen did her new show (and I made all the scenery); and now I’m doing Artweeks.
Artweeks is an Oxford/Oxfordshire festival, in which hundreds of artists open their studios to visitors for a few days.
If you’re in the area, do come and see the hippos!
My Artweeks gallery gives some idea of what I’m showing.
I don’t remember drawing Itchy with such an open smile before. I didn’t know he could!
There are times when semi-aquatic is only half the story. At the weekend we visited the Grant Museum of Zoology in London, part of University College London. The museum was used as a reference for students, and pulls no punches. They have a lot of pretty gruesome stuff in there, including a whole jarful of pickled moles, as well as the more uplifting sight of dodo bones and a near-complete quagga skeleton (brought up to totality by 3D scanning and printing reflected parts from one side to use on the other.) A combination of unsettling and fascinating. Anyway, a puffer fish in a cabinet caught my attention, and by the time I got home it had trans-hippogrified out of my sketch-book.