Drawing at Royal Veterinary College

The Royal Veterinary College (in Camden) is running some evening sessions for drawing its specimens. I had been to a session in August, and drew the elephant skeleton that graces the cafe atrium -

The college's facebook page has a gallery of images from the drawing sessions. I used a felt pen in an A5-sized book, quite a challenge for capturing the elephant. Have you heard that elephants have four kneecaps? Actually the front "knees" are elbows...

But to the present: it was birds' beaks that caught my eye -

Magellanic penguins

Egret, curlew, and ... hmm, don't know ...

This is Bubo bubo, the Eurasian eagle owl

There's something amazing about those eye sockets...

A smaller owl, also with scleral bones round the eye

The specimen of choice was removed from the case and we could (carefully) handle it. I turned Bubo bubo this way and that (ignoring the tiger skull behind him) for a page of blind drawings, discovering his bony secrets, with a view to reading about it later - owls' eyes are fascinating - and did you know there are 216 species of owl, 18 of which are of the barn owl family? (the others are "typical owls", Strigidae family) -

Some rear views, including a closer look at the vertebrae -

I wasn't the only one to choose an owl skeleton  -

 A few more photos from this fascinating place -

Teaching materials

Hen in a cage?

 And this is Lucy, our australopithicine relative -

She's the size of a child, and children are apparently fascinated by her when similar models are taken round to schools - they can look her right in the eye. And she's ever so old ... 3.2 million, how many birthdays is that?