I have recently arrived in New Ferry where I am undertaking an artist in residency at the New Ferry Butterfly Park. It is organised by Carol Ramsay who is passionate about the park and made a wonderful job of organising the residency.
On arrival I was shown round the park by Paul, the warden, and Hilary, a botanist. They too are passionate about the park and extremely knowledgeable about the many environments and creatures contained in this small area. It is a former railway station and Victorian brick works so contains interesting fragments of memorabilia. A fragment of brick from the 19th century contains the footprints of a wandering hedgehog. It is a gem and on my first visit we spotted 7 small coppers, 5 blues and a speckled white along with common newts hiding under railway sleepers. Mistletoe grows amongst self-seeded apple trees and a number of orchids inhabit the rich section of lime waste. A Sunday afternoon can be well spent spotting butterflies in this secreted park. There are over 20 species to look out for.
I had started researching my project with the help of Paul and Hilary before leaving home. My proposal is to paint four large paving stones for four different habitats of the park; The Pond, Long Grasses. Nettle Beds and Lime Waste. The stones will have children’s spotting games with accompanying identification sheets which will help educate children in the art of observation and identification. It’s an ambitious project in the time allocated for my residency but its such a worth while project to contribute to I am happy to finish the illustration when the residency finishes.
Having visited the park and taken extra photos to help relate the images on the stone directly to the park I have primed the paving stones and started on the rough compositions. Prior to coming I researched finding the best paint for the job. I found a wonderful man Nino at Promain Paint who really knows anything and everything you want to know about specialist paints. I done a community project with Bourne Youth Group where I need a paint that was not only suitable for painting on stone, would last but was also slip proof and scuff proof. The answer is tennis court line paint which is the most wonderful creamy acrylic paint I have worked with. It is very expensive so finding another project that I could use it on is an added bonus. I made sure the lids were firmly on and it has kept extremely well so to be recommended for any of you wanting to paint on stone in an exterior setting. I am going to use it to paint games on playground tarmac so it has opened up a whole range of new possibilities.
Having spent the weekend roughing out the images for each composition, I started the slightly scary task of painting the stones. I have bought standard cement paving stones which although they have a fine mesh texture on them are like working on a rough canvas. First I give them a layer of white paint so the colours are brighter and more reflective. The great thing I have found with the acrylic paint is that you can happily paint pale colours on top of dark colours. After doing a little test I decided to change my plan and instead of pencilling up all the images on the white decided to block in the background colours and then draw up the insects using pale pencil crayon. This has saved hours of work painting around lots of tiny ants and wood lice.
I had the joy of being commissioned to make a gnome on a toadstool by a visiting drunk, a lecturer from Liverpool University has offered my the opportunity to become involved with an entomological project and the locals pop on to the pop-up shop which is my wonderful studio base for the month of June. I will be having an exhibition at the shop later in June to which everyone will be invited. Details to follow.
Meantime I will be running free workshops on June 2nd Drawing from Nature and Paint a Stone for your own Garden on June 3rd.
To book Email Carol on [email protected].
