Let’s get ready to go!

John Dyer prepares his equipment ready for the expedition to India.

So it’s time for artist John Dyer and myself, Joanne Short, to prepare and get ready for our trip to the Pench Forest in India, where we will be looking at tigers, the environment they live in, and at the people who live in and around the forest where the tigers live.

We now need to start thinking about what we should take for our expedition.

The first thing John needs to think about is how many canvases he thinks he’s going to paint and what size they should be. He then needs to work out how much paint to take -  there will be certain colours that will be more useful than others. We will be there for quite a few days, so he will also have to make sure he’s got enough for the whole time we are there. Other art materials that we will take with us are drawing books and pens, and also some watercolours to use to sketch with while we are sitting looking at the incredible environment around us and have the opportunity to get all this down onto paper.

Because of the sort of project that we are running, we need to make sure that we’ve got all the equipment that we’re going to need to be able to do the videos, blogs, photos and the audio recordings while we are there.

Joanne Short will be using our telephoto camera and video camera to capture the wildlife and inspire your class.

We will be photographing and filming and will need min-tripods and cameras. We will be doing interviews with various people for our project, so we will also need digital microphones clipped onto our shirts and a handheld microphones for interviews.

We are hoping to interview some children at the school where we will be working and painting, and also we are hoping to work alongside some of the local community and the tribal Gond people. The Gond people have their own style of painting and we are hoping to be able to see some of this to show you. We are also hoping that the villages will perform some of the music that they are famous for in that region. This is another reason for taking microphones with us.

Bengal Tiger seen in the forest of Pench in India

Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee that we’re going to see any tigers because they are very few in number and tend to come out at night. However we will be finding out all about their habitat and how they live. There will be many other animals to see and show you - and plenty for us all to learn about.

When John is painting in a warm environment, he likes to make sure that the clothes that he wears protect him from the sun and also from any bugs, especially mosquitoes, that may be around. It’s really important to keep as much skin covered as possible. We are hoping that there won’t be too many insects around because it is actually the dry season at the moment and because there hasn’t been any rain for a while; hopefully, there won’t be too many mosquitoes as they tend to breed in the wet season. Sun hats and sun cream are also an essential part of the kit, and we like to make sure that we are out of the sun as much as possible. We are expecting it to be quite warm - the area where we are going tends to be at this time of year around 30°C, so although it’s not scorching, it is still very warm for us, especially this time of year when we are used to quite low temperatures of anything from 0 to 15°C down here in Cornwall.

We take a lot of equipment to run an expedition including lots of paint and canvas, cameras, mics, iPad, batteries, solar panels, expedition clothes and lots more!

So once we’ve gathered all the equipment together, we like to lay it all out onto the floor to see what we’ve got and to make sure that we’ve got everything we need. We’ve got a list just to check we’ve got everything, and then we start to put it all into our bags. We use holdalls with wheels (as they are quite heavy and we need to be able to put it all along) that are also backpacks because at times we may end up in an area where we can’t wheel our bags, so we may have to carry them instead.

We are starting to get really excited about the project, and I really looking forward to it although feeling slightly apprehensive as well because it’s a long way to go and it’s quite an adventure. It’s going to be a lot of fun and we are going to see and learn lots of new things.

We hope that you enjoy following us and seeing the paintings that John does during the trip. And we look forward to sharing the interviews, blogs and photography from the jungle.

So, it’s time for us to set off, and we hope that the next time you hear from us, we will be in India.

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