Mark Bardsley's Autumnwatch caricatures

HOW TO DRAW WITH A STARLING ON YOUR HEAD!! by MARK BARDSLEY.

Well, I thought Unsprung fans might like to know what its like to produce a piece of art work live on the show.

At first the prospect seems rather a daunting challenge, half an hour is not much time to produce anything really is it? And how do you avoid becoming a massive bag of nerves when drawing live on telly?

The real secret is preparation. My approach was firstly to sit through all the previous editions of Unsprung and Autumn Watch (It was nice to have a good excuse to do that!) while scribbling away in my sketch book. The result was 16 pages of sketches and ideas including parrots and peregrins, stags and sea trout, bird eating squirrels, science geeks and performing poodles!

I then developed some of these ideas into a set of visual gags and made several drawings with them all put together in one scene. The final stage was to practice a full sized version giving myself about 25 minutes. I was then able to discard one or two ideas that took a bit too long.

So there you are, a couple of days preparation for half an hours drawing! Of course, nothing can quite prepare you for drawing with a starling on your head but being a keen bird watcher myself, I found it strangely reassuring and if anything, I think it helped things along.

My only disappointment was not meeting Itchy and Scratchy who I did manage to feature in my cartoon. I suspect they are still recovering from the embarrassment of messing up on their singing debut and are keeping a low profile!

I have to say a massive thankyou to the Autumn Watch team who were wonderfully hospitable and every bit as lovely as they appear on the Telly. And of course a big thanks for continuing to raise the profile of our very wonderful wildlife. Any questions and I'll do my best to answer them. Mark Bardsley.