Hans the Flenser

To raise funds for the Rat Eradication Project, an auction was held on board ship. I was asked to illustrate  a poem about the largest blue whale ever recorded, which was landed at Grytviken (and hence the largest animal ever known to exist).
The Rat Eradication Project, as the name suggests, is a project to get rid of the introduced rats on South Georgia . This is a colossal undertaking involving helicopter drops of poison bait. It's also a race against time before the glaciers recede and allow the current discrete populations to merge.
due to a printer malfunction, I had to re-do the final page, I've only got a photo of the double-printed original one. It should be clear enough to read though.

Ocean Harbour- the Bayard

A quick sketch of SS Bayard, with elephant seal and whale vertebrae in the foreground. Very quickly done due to the onset of rain, and i'm not happy with how the elephant seal looks. I guess that is in the nature of elephant seals though, their facial appearance changes a lot depending on how squashed their nose is when they are lying down.
The Bayard, incidentally was built in Liverpool and wrecked here when it broke loose from its moorings on the other side of the harbour in a gale.

melting snow- finished painting

After trying it out in sketch form, I've done a half-imperial painting of the hillside with melting snow revealing the underlying ground, Its on arches 30gsm, rough which is a pleasure to paint on at times, depending on the subject matter.

Early spring hillside

I liked the abstract nature of the stripes of vegetation that appear as the snow slowly recedes, and have attempted to gain a sense of this in the sketch below. I think this might work well as a larger painting, and I've just taken delivery of some rough arches paper which would lend itself ideally to this type of subject.

Reluctant subject, Fortuna Bay

An email from Fio, one of my fellow passengers on the MV Plancius, reminded me of a sketch I did of him taking a photo of a shy penguin. Once again, a poor photo taken with my iPad which I hope to rectify shortly.

David Attenborough's film

I've just seen the publicity for David Attenborough's new film about King Penguins, which was filmed on South Georgia. My curiosity aroused, a quick google to see whereabouts on South Georgia it was filmed produced this image:

Gold Harbour on an overcast day, the other side of the stream from where I painted, and summertime rather than spring judging by the lack of snow. It seems camera crews have no more desire than the rest of us to lug heavy equipment around, as this is right by the main zodiac landing spot.

Stromness

Stromness is one of the larger and best-preserved of the South Georgia whaling stations. In latter years it became a ship repair base, and the foreshore is littered with large propellers , giving the place the atmosphere of Nash's "totesmeer". Unfortunately access is restricted, and there is a 200 metre exclusion zone around the site. I skirted inland around the back, and sketched a view of the graveyard with an incongruous backdrop of rusting oil tanks. Until I find the battery charger for my camera, I'm stuck with posting iPad photos of my paintings, so once again apologies for the poor reproduction. The painting is half imperial size, my favourite size to paint.

The drab grey screes in the background gave the place an even more melancholy atmosphere than usual.