A visit to the zoo

I love visitng the zoo here in Zürich, it's so beautiful, and now they've added a new enclosure - Australia, with the koalas as main attraction.

The emus and wallabies are free to roam and mingle with the visitors. The wallabies were a bit shy, though, and prefared to keep their distance. The emus, on the other hand, were very interested in investigating...

The elephants enjoyed some quality family time.

The Masoala hall is always a special place to visit. You never quite know what you're going to see. It's something different every time. But there's always something to see. And this little mouse lemur was just the sweetest little creature!

Mouse Lemur from Nordljus on Vimeo.

That plant must be especially delicious, because on our way back, we saw this little fellow. Usually, they just sit motionless upside down on tree trunks.

Gecko from Nordljus on Vimeo.

One of the animals you pretty much always see, is the chameleon. This time, we saw four different ones. What characters they are. And their colours, patterns and textures are just amazing.

The end of another wonderful day at the zoo, and one last glimpse back in the later afternoon light, before the zoo shut it's gate, and the animals got some well deserved peace and quiet.

The end of the heat wave and a visit to the local wildlife park

Ice lollies. They're basically what gets me through summer... I'm not a summer person at all, it's my least favourite season, and anything beyond 25 degrees Celsius is far too hot for me. But I think I'm not the only one who's glad that this heat wave is finally coming to an end. And my bronchitis has cleared up as well, at long last, last weekend, and I've got some energy back.
I've made some more banana kiwi lollies, but I also have some shop bought ones in the freezer. These melon and strawberry ones have been around for decades. The only ones of my favourite ice lollies that are still around. And I've eaten a lot of these this summer....

Cooking is also not something I feel like doing when it's 30+ degrees, and I usually don't know what to get and make. But this cucumber salad is perfect. Delicious and refreshing. I used to make cucumber salad with a "normal" salad dressing with vinegar and oil, but no matter how much herbs and salt I added, it always ended up watery and tasteless. This one is my Mum's recipe, I meant to ask her about it for ages, and now that I finally have, I immediately added it into my illustration recipe book, so that I won't forget it anymore. It still gets a bit watery, but it keeps its taste, and I love it.

During our holiday, we went to the nearby Wildlife park, which is always worth a visit. We didn't really expect to see many animals, it was a hot summer afternoon, and I expected most of the animals to hide in the shade and sleep. The enclosures are large and built to imitate the animals natural habitat as closely as possible, which means that there's plenty of room for them to be out of sight. But we were so spoilt, in fact, I don't think I've ever seen so many different animals in a single visit!

Moose are one of my favourite animals, and I'm always happy to see them, and what a treat to see them so close up! A big one was resting right next to the fence, and a small one was nibbling at the trees a few metres away.

Of course there's plenty of wildlife in the woods and grass along the paths as well.

The mouse house is always worth a visit. They are just so sweet. But rather hard to capture, they are so quick.

The shy and beautiful wildcats were also strolling around right in front of your eyes. Such gorgeous animals.

We were so lucky to see the bears not only once, but twice! They came all the way down from the woods to the water, I guess they were hot too and wanted to cool down.

Junior had a splash in the water...

Splashing from Nordljus on Vimeo.

... while mummy bear was just staying cool and relaxed.

After we came back to the café for an ice lolly, the bears came back too. They too wanted a little snack.

Feeding time from Nordljus on Vimeo.

We also saw the foxes, the alpine marmots, the wild boars, the bisons, including a baby bison!, the wild horses, and of course, the deer. But I didn't get many good photos, my wideangle/macro zoom lens is not really suited for animals. But it was a wonderful afternoon. We also went to the zoo, and I hope to share some photos from there next time.

Supracolor anniversary edition, and a visit to a special place

I prepared a long post for today, but very annoyingly, Blogger has completely messed up my posts. When I wanted to add the finishing touches yesterday, it had disappeared, and instead, I had two identical copies of another draft. I don't know what Blogger has done with my post, and I can't really understand how this could happen. But it certainly is most annoying. I thought that technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but I feel that in the past two or three years, it has just become more and more complicated and annoying, and more expensive. But I better don't get started about it all....

So here's a shorter version of my post for today. In my last post, I talked about the Schmincke limited edition metallics watercolour box, and today, I'm showing you another special edition that I got the other day, the Caran d'Ache Supracolor limited edition anniversary box with 30 new colours.

Actually, I'm not really too fond of limited edition art supplies. But I simply couldn't resist this box. I do love Caran d'Ache products, and living in Switzerland, I grew up with them and have been using them all my life. They are readily available here, and are among one of the very few things that are actually cheaper here than pretty much every where else.

The problem with limited edition art supplies is, well, obviously, that their availability is limited, and once they're gone, they're gone. With something like the Schmincke metallic watercolours, it doesn't bother me too much, because I won't use them much anyway. I bought them just for fun, and I might play around with them occasionally, but I doubt I'd miss them once they're used up. But with other supplies, if something works for me and I like using it, and get used to it, well, I want to be able to buy it again. So basically, if I know that something isn't available, I'd just rather not use it at all. It may well be that the colour charts below are the only time these gorgeous pencils will ever be used.

Actually, I am a bit confused about these. On the box, it says that they are exclusive colours and on the pencils themselves, it says Limited Edition. But on their website, it also says that to celebrate the 30 years of Supracolor, they are "enriching the Supracolor^® Soft colour palette with thirty brand new colours in addition to the 120 existing shades". So maybe it's just this particular box that is limited edition, and the colours will eventually be available? It seems a bit of a shame to create so many new colours and then not actually sell them. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

The lighter ones also work very well on darker backgrounds.

Making these colour charts has inspired me to take out and try my other watercolour pencils again. I like them, and I think they could be really useful for sketching outside, if you don't always want to take a proper watercolour box with you. I like how they come alive once you add water. But I haven't actually used them very much, so I'm now trying to get the hang of them.

Last Monday, I got to spend the morning at one of my favourite places, a nearby park famous for its rhododendrons and azaleas. A truly gorgeous, peaceful and tranquil place. Well, until lunchtime, when the masses started to arrive. I've never seen so many people queuing at the entrance when I left. But then it was a public holiday, and the first day of really fine weather in quite a while. There used to be a decent connection but unfortunately, they changed the bus time tables a while ago, which now makes getting there by public transport a real pain in the neck (1 hr 10 minutes, whereof 45 minutes is just waiting for connections, vs 15 minutes by car), otherwise I would go there much more often.

The end of the 100 Day Project, some travel sketches, and two new palettes

I knew, when I decided to take part in The 100 Day Project, that I wasn't going to do it every day, and that my holiday would certainly be a problem. But I ended up doing so little while I was away, that I decided there really just was no point to pretend and continue. So I'm just back to my normal goal of trying to draw daily, or least as much as possible. So these sketches where the last I did for the challenge before before my holiday.

Before my holiday, I put together a new watercolour palette, big enough to contain 24 colours, compact enough to carry around with me. It took me ages to put it together (I'm not good at making decisions....) but finally I came up with a selection I was happy with. At least for the moment. Some colours might not be essential, and admittedly, I chose them mainly because I liked them. That's the problem with colours. You really don't need that many to achieve a lot. But they are just so beautiful. Irresistible. We'll see how useful they will proof. That's the nice thing with watercolour palettes. You can always change and adjust them.

My goal of doing some outside sketching on my holiday wasn't very successful. I really only managed two times, at the beginning, when it was still warm. In the second half, the weather got rather cold and very windy. Certainly not the kind of weather to take out your art materials. At least not for me. But I got some drawing done, at least.

And then, although I've decided that I really have enough watercolour palettes now, and I really, really don't need another one for a while, I bought another one. I'm afraid I just couldn't resist. It's a limited edition from Schmincke, with twelve metallic colours and six metallic golds. I probably won't use them very often, the colours are quite subtle, but it'll be fun to get them out from time to time, and you can also mix them with your normal colours to add a bit of sparkle. And they come in that special square-ish palette, which is always useful to have.

It's difficult to catch the sparkle with the camera, but they really do shine and sparkle on paper.