Living on the Edge

I'm lucky enough to have a quite a large garden which is visited by a wide variety of animals and birds.

We buy bird food by the sackful in the winter to stock our feeders, which as well as attracting many birds also attracts the grey squirrels.

I know many people regard these as pests, but we don't have the native red squirrels in my area so I don't need to feel bad about being fond of my grey's.

One female squirrel who I think is feeding young, is particularly tame and feeds right outside my window. She is easy to photograph and after I had taken several nice shots of her I decided it was time to put pencil to paper.

I intend to call this 'Living on the Edge' partly because she is balanced right on the edge of a feeding dish, high above the ground, and partly because they are in conflict with man throughout some of their range.

I need to add here that the collies are much less fond of the squirrels, and tell me in no uncertain terms that I should let them out to play with them. In turn the squirrels have come to recognise the dogs can't reach them and stand there making rude squirrel gestures.

I have recently received some new paper to try. This is Mellotex which comes in various weights and shades of white.

I ordered the 340gms as I like a fairly heavy paper and this is ultra white.

After my Meerkat I am still in graphite mode so decided to continue to use graphite with the addition of Graphitints.

The graphitints are made by Derwent and are watersoluble coloured graphite. They can be used dry to give a hint of colour, or wet if you want a brighter effect.

They are manufactured in 24 colours but not all of them are lightfast so I restrict my use of them to the ones classed as lightfast.

The size will be about 18 x 14 inches and I am using a HB mechanical pencil and graphitints in cool brown, dark indigo and cloud grey.