A recent request for ‘any little pencil drawings of otters not already on the website’ saw me in the studio gingerly opening the drawer marked “Mostly mammals”. As I have written before, John had several chests of architect’s plan drawers to accommodate sketches, unframed watercolours, old illustrations and the like. Although shallow at only about 5cm high, each drawer is enormously wide and deep and there are many pieces of paper in each one.
In the early 1980’s John had spent some time in Shetland “watching rain and otters” with the wildlife film maker Hugh Miles (see wikipedia), so I was hopeful that I would find a number of drawings. John had illustrated Hugh’s book The Track of the Wild Otter (publ. Elm Tree Books 1984), and we had found some of the illustrations previously. This time I struck lucky with many otter sketches and a couple of illustrations from the book. But there were also irresistible red deer, pine martens, mice, squirrels and other rodents. I will be adding them to the website as I can, meanwhile here is a selection of UK and European mammals for you. Enjoy!
If you’re looking for something in particular, the search facility in the SHOP can pull up pictures from across all the galleries and covers about 85% of the pictures on the website. I am also open to requests and have a database of mostly framed pictures not yet on the website and also a fair few drawers still to explore!
