Travel to Africa

If you were wondering where to go in Africa, and when

this might help, but important thing is to just go.

Alastair Fothergill's wildlife movie 'African Cats'

This year Alastair Fothergill, who I was working for at the time I wrote Ride the Wings of Morning, brought out the wildlife movie African Cats produced for DisneyNature. It was filmed entirely on location in the Masai Mara. Each shot is beautiful. Have you seen it? What is quite daunting is that Sarah-Jane and I rode across the same country - on horses.

Sketches of Giraffe

Watching girafffe is an incredibly peaceful activity.

This is possibly because although they seem to be silent, the adults communicate at a frequency we cannot detect.

It's always rather alarming to see how long their tongues are.

It is diffcult to draw them when you are given a regular-sized commission, but not impossible:

I once produced this ink and watercolour to illustrate a brochure.

And this cartoon for a map of horse safaris in the Okavango.

But this quick sketch is perhaps my favorite.


All sketches are featured in 'Ride the Wings of Morning' and are (c) Sophie Neville. Please contact me if you need to use them on sophie@sophieneville.co.uk

What Ant and Tessa Baber are doing now - two of the characters from 'Ride the Wings of Morning'

Anthony and Tessa Baber, who appear in 'Ride the Wings of Morning' are still running horse safaris in the Waterberg. They have had great success breeding rare species such as Sable Antelope and Livingstone Eland. I was able to take Tamzin out to ride with them for a much needed break from her own livestock. She was thrilled to meet the rhino and was amazed how close Anthony got to them - on foot.

Elephants I have known ~

I was once able to spend three days at Abu's Camp in Botswana. This is Abu.

I not only walked with Africa elephants, but we rode them.

What was enchanting was that the young elephants - orphans who had been adopted into the herd - came with us. Having completed these graphics for the Elephant Back Safaris I went on to sketch wild elephants in Damaraland, in Namibia.

I ended up with two sets of silhouettes of elephant walking acorss the desert in single file, as they do, which I sold as limited edition prints and as 'Elephant Writing Paper'. These sold through the David Sheppherd Wildlife Foundation and The Born Free catalogues.

It looks a bit odd without any writing on it. This is how it looked in the catalogue.

And on my own art website.

All sketches are featured in 'Ride the Wings of Morning' and are (c) Sophie Neville. Please contact me if you need to use them on sophie@sophieneville.co.uk