This is the logo that I have designed with Valentina for our ‘consume-local’ and ecological group in our village and surrounding area.

I like the visual impact of the design, which riffs on the inherent humour in the name by effectively ‘catalanizing’ the concept -and sound- “SLOW” (that sounds like “ÉS L’OU”, which stands for “it’s the egg” in Catalan). We support the Slow Food movement and, above all, the organic aspect of the type of daily consumption that we aim for: what better way than to illustrate it withn hybrid of a snail, one of the thousands of such creatures that infest our gardens and eat our artichokes, and an egg, the best of methaphors of a new life about to begin?!

Our ‘local-food’ group progresses in consonance with its logo … The initial meetings took place in spring 2013 under the shade of the oaks of the village square, with a typically Mediterranean supper to boot! Now, in winter, it’s harder to persuade people to leave their homes when evenings are so dark and cold. But, like snails, I’m sure we’ll be out and about again come the spring.

I’ve now illustrated almost half the species for the next volume of the Handbook of the Mammals of the World, devoted to the marsupials, and so far I’ve not done any kangaroos!

The marsupials are a very heterodox group and we should not think just of the classic kangaroo or the famous koala when marsupials are mentioned.

In fact, many marsupials do not live in Australia but in America and on both continents they seem to fill all the different ecological niches available to small-to-medium-size mammals in these continents’ ecosystems. When I draw these marsupials I can’t help but think that I’m just drawing shrews, mice, weasels, squirrels, moles, genets, monkeys or dormice!!

Here you have a few examples: