The colours of Ainsdale NNR

As well as producing an educational colouring in sheet for Ainsdale Nature Reserve, I also wanted to be able to complete some work where I could show of the colour of Ainsdale myself.
From my volunteer work helping out at educational events I found myself learning about the rare and colourful creatures that are found in the dune habitats. While face painting It was great to see the children flicking through the FSC (field studies council) guides wanting to find out about the colours of the insects they where gong to be painted as. This made me wonder what other simple ways I could use my design skills to help children engage more with nature and learning.

While completing the line drawings for the colouring in sheets I also started drawing and using watercolour to bring the creatures to life a bit more in my sketchbook too.

When visiting Eva (Community Outreach Adviser at Ainsdale NNR) I showed her my colouring in sheets and discussed with her my ideas for also producing a set of colourful, educational collages for the reserve. I showed her my sketchbook and also brought along “Amelia’s Anthology of Illustration” by Amelia Gregory, where I had found many inspiring collages on the theme of nature. One particularly inspiring illustrator I found featured in the book was the work of Mia Overgaard, http://www.miaovergaard.com/

She draws animals very realistically adding lots of mixes of colour with the pencil drawings to create very striking and beautiful pieces. I draw best when I draw realistically and was worrying that my drawings might not appeal to younger children that much as they can sometimes engage better with more cartoon style drawings. So seeing Mia’s work made me think that adding lots of colour and giving the piece a kind of fairytale style may also work well at stimulating children’s imaginations.

Eva gave me a list of lots more creatures and plants that she would love to see painted and that would keep me occupied. While I was visiting Ainsdale I also took the opportunity to take lots of photographs to get a feel for the landscape so I could create some habitat drawings for my collages.

I managed to get some good aerial shots from up high on one of the sand dunes. I printed of lots of the photos I took and blue tacked them to my wall so I could get a better perspective looking at them and motivate me to start some paintings. Some of the aerial shots I was able to place over the top of each other to form a big panorama photo of the landscape. I decided to get my easel out and roughly paint this to get me started!