I have just finished five information boards depicting the natural environments of Els Ports that will decorate the field study centre in the village of Prat del Comte. The work was commissioned by the Natural Park a few months ago and are a good example of how environmental panoramas should be designed with their target audience in mind.

I had already illustrated the Park’s natural environments for my guidebook to this protected area as part of my collection of guides to the flora and fauna. The size of these panoramas, though, was small (11×17 cm), which obliged me to make the animals proportionally much larger so that they could be properly appreciated in the guide. The new batch of redrawn panoramas for the Park are 40×60 cm and all have to be ‘read’ in a different way, more as ‘posters’. They provide more space for adding proportionally smaller elements that are better integrated into the landscape than in the guides, but are still equally visible. I had to redesign the panoramas considerably by returning to the layers of the original document, and then reworking them one-by-one and redoing or adding the animals and elements that were necessary.

The two panoramas in proportion to their original scale. Left, the one originally published in the guide; right, the new poster, 40x60cm.

The same two previous panoramas, shown at the same size: you can spot the differences, with the one on the left showing less, proportionally bigger elements.

…from the Mediterranean and from the next volume of the Handbook of the Mammals of the World. This is a pup of a Mediterranean Monk Seal (Monachus monachus), an animal that has always fascinated me.

At the moment I’m finishing the final illustrations of the sea mammals for the next volume of this encyclopaedia, which include drawings of the pups of all the pinnipeds (seals and sea-lions). Some of the drawings resemble adorable stuffed toys – above all, the Arctic seals – while others are less surprising – such as the elephant seals. However, the most gorgeous of all are the pups of the threatened Mediterranean Monk Seal, delightful with their delicate shiny black skins, white bellies and such tender expressions on their faces!

Some pups from seals, sealions, elephant seal and walrus

Around 10 years ago, a group of naturalist friends and I paddled in kayaks around the islands of the Aegean Sea in search of these seals. This is my field sketch drawn from the top of a cliff of the only seal we saw, off the coast of the island of Kimolos. One of the last such seals…

An adult monk seal swimming on the surface between the islands of Kimolos and Milos, Greece, 2003. Drawn in the company of Ponç Feliu and Pere Renom.