Canopy Invertebrate Sorting Images as Inspiration

While exploring the Natural History museum I came across a station call the 'Specimen Preparation Area', where the microscope view of one of the research scientists could be viewed on a monitor. The board explained, " Canopy Invertebrate Sorting - We are sorting and identifying Invertebrate samples that have been collected high in the canopy of the tropical rainforest trees (around 40m above the ground). We have to extract the insects, spiders and other invertebrates from the detritus that is also in the sample. Then we sort them into groups for later analysis. Many of the invertebrates are microscopic (less than 0.5mm) in size! We have to be very precise and careful picking them up and moving them around."

You could see the scientist  moving bits of insect and dirt floating in the solution which were lit from behind. It made them glow, some of the thinner particles becoming transparent, their edges alight. It made me think of the plants in the field that I use for my paintings. An over exposed image of a form in nature. The process I have been following with some of my sketches has been to magnify them, increasing their size, very much like what I now saw at the exhibition station which was designed to show a scientific process.

I also like the way they move and filmed a series of shorts I'll cut together as an experiment. It occurs to me that there is a sound that could match the images especially when the tweezers come into shot, potentially a metal sound and I'm interested in making some samples using such implements. Then putting them over the video as a sound track.

Another interesting aspect that I observed was that because the insect and dirt was floating in a solution it created a three dimensional effect. I'm thinking maybe I could set up a series of transparent troughs that I could stack and photograph from above. This could inspire my paintings and drawings but also be a work in its own right.

Tring Zoological Museum and Stuffed Crows

I have naturally been seeking a range of sources for my illustration. So far I have drawn crows from photographs I have sourced online and winter fields from photographs I have taken in the countryside. But I have been looking to work from taxidermy crows and have been looking online to purchase one. Yet, I wondered if this would be the same when the high resolution photographs, I have been working from, show something living (the life and energy obvious) and often in dramatic poses. So would working from a stuffed animal feel the same or inspire such works? One place I went to look into this in December was the Tring Natural History Museum. I thought it a better idea to actually see some stuffed crows before I bought one.

The Tring Natural History Museum has an extensive collection of stuffed animals. I sought out the crow family and knelt before the glass staring at their lifeless status. Never have I felt so disappointed with my subject matter as then as I stared at the awkwardly posed birds. Not only were their eyes totally wrong, which is what I kind of expected, but their features seemed unnatural, their positions wrong and the sorry quality of their overall presence was like a diminished light. These weren't the powerful creatures I expected more sorry uninspiring replicas.

I stood back and realised that these were not the crows from my drawings or the beautifully grim birds that Ted Hughes talked about in his poetry. I resolved that I would need to photograph or draw from live birds.

Tring Natural History Museum - The Walter Rothschild Building, Akeman St, Tring, Hertfordshire HP23 6AP

PLEASE NOTE: The Tring Museum is a wonderful and inspiring place and as I witness some specimens are showing their age. I highly recommend a trip there despite this experience as they have thousands of great taxidermy animals and the place is a national gem.