Southern Ontario Nature and Science Illustrators

It's been a happily busy month!

I attended the second meeting of the Southern Ontario Nature and Science Illustrators (SONSI), held at the Wings of Paradise Butterfly Conservatory in Cambridge, Ontario earlier this month. I'm not linking to the SONSI website yet, because we haven't made one. I'm helping artist Jennifer Osborn create it.

After being greeted at the door by scientific illustrator-and-later-voted-SONSI-president Emily Damstra, my wife Michelle, our nephew and I had free rein to roam through the conservatory - before it was open to the public.

Michelle visiting a resident.

Our nephew and I sketching.

Later, while Michelle and the neph took amazing photos of birds, turtles, plants and more, I settled into a presentation by entomologists Dave Cheung and Morgan Jackson. They showed us various ways to take excellent photos of insects, techniques to aid in getting better depth of field and lighting. Very useful for painting, and Dave's digital paintings were pretty awesome. You can see his work at DKB Digital Designs. Morgan's photos and blog are here, if you love insects, you can't miss this. Dave is also our VP.

Afterward, the SONSI group got together, we voted on a slight name change, voted for members, and discussed our goals. I'll be sure to post a link here to the website once it gets going.

And let me say - what a treat! Getting to meet so many talented and passionate people in such a venue was terrific. Thanks to Emily for setting up what promises to be a great group.

And hey, if you live in the Kitchener-to-Toronto corridor of southern Ontario and wish to join, just send an email!

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Except these photos were mostly not by me, but by my family.

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