Are you planning to go to Cape Town?

Sketches made travelling through the winelands ~

Visiting a friend at Roggelands, near Paarl ~

In the old Botantical Gardens looking at the South African Library ~

A map I sketched of the Cape Town area ~

One of many bird lists I have kept ~

and some visual notes

on ground nesting birds

and those keeping an eye on them

filming

keeping out of the way

or or just looking

Sketching in the Okavango Delta ~

Macateer, that camp where I spent time sketching in the western delta ~

jotting down impressions,

trying to paint the bush as darkness fell,

...sketching vignettes of

horses and wildlife

to add to maps I drew of the area

Sketches from the Okavango Delta ~

I first went to the Okavango to ride horses with PJ and Barney Bestelink.

It is wonderful being on a horse as you can cross both the water-meadows and dry islands.

I then took friends on to stay at Tchau, a camp on the Borro River run by Jez Lye.

The camp looked out over the flood plain.

We slept in large tents on an island, standing in the shade of Jackalberry trees.

The location of the Okavnago Delta in Botswana

Please let Sophie Neville know if you would like to use any of her artwork.
sophie@sophieneville.co.uk

Might I inspire you to travel more?

It's always hard to get away, but one thing I have resolved to do in 2013 is to travel more.

It's always good to travel with a purpose.

A sketch book and a small paintbox can enrich one's experience.

It doesn't matter how good the pictures are. This one didn't work very well but elements proved useful.

It's good to observe, to take visual notes.

I find I have poor hand-eye coordination when I am tired but improve with practice.

If nothing else, you return home with a record of your experience.

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

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

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

Drawing Rhinos ~

She was called Tracy. Tracy the white rhino. She was wearing an earring when I first met her, quietly grazing on lucerne in a boma constructed of gum poles. I whipped out a pencil and paper and started to draw her. I was working as a safari guide and took any chance I could to take visitors back to see her, encouraging them to draw too. There was a population of fifteen white rhino already in the game reserve where I lived. In the reserve across the river they had black rhino who thrived in the dense bushvelt. I visited them too, sketching away from the back of an open Toyota Landcruiser. The warden's wife adopted and brought-up an abandoned baby black rhino she called Bwana who we fed with milk from a huge Cola Cola bottle. His saliva made out finger-nails become coarse and ridged.

In the mid 1990s I set up a wildlife serial called 'Dawn to Dusk' for the BBC Natural History Unit. I decided that it would be good to dedicate one episode to the work of Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia.

These are my sketches of some of the 2,500 ancient rock engravings made by Stone-age hunter-gatheres in the Kunene Region of Namibia about 6,000 years ago.

I had time to quickly draw copies of these remarkable bushmen engravings at Twyfelfontein when I was on the BBC recce but didn't manage to do more than take photographs when I was tracking with the game scouts. At one point we were charged by a cow - a rhino cow - called Rita. It was all I could do to hang onto my nerves whilst scrabbling up a tree.

Blythe Loutit, the Director of Save the Rhino Trust kindly invited me back a year later to take part in a rhino census. It was then that I was able to sketch the rare black rhino of Damaraland as well as the elephant roaming the desert. I was also able to use the unique wealth of ID photographs that the scouts had collected and filed.

Some of the rhinos had developed the most amazing shaped horns.

I translated my smaller ink drawings into silhouettes that the Rhino Trust could use for graphics.

This ink and watercolour sketch was drawn from one of Blythe Loutit's photographs. I executed a similar one in a grey platee which was auctioned at Phillips of Bond Street to raise funds for the charity Rhino Rescue.  It isn't brilliant but they entitled it 'Rhino's Bottoms and it brought a bit of laughter to the auction room.

This ink drawing of a white rhino was part of a set made into grettings cards sold in aid of The Born Free Foundation. As you can see they have a confirmation not unlike that of a horse ~ quite different from elephant who have four knees. They operate their pig-like ears independently, as shown here, rotating them like RADAR receivers, listening out for poachers.

If you need graphics of rhinos for any reason - let me know. I have a huge amount of drawings that have never been used.

Here is a shot of me riding past three white rhino who used to graze outside our house ~

All sketches on the blog 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