Many of us might be familiar with hammerhead sharks and their hammer-shaped heads; bonnetheads are their smaller cousins. During this session with Wild Life Drawing, we heard from Jasmin Graham, a marine biologist who is based in Florida and co-founder of MISS – Minorities in Shark Science.
We had reference images of these small, omnivorous sharks to work from while we listened to Jasmin’s experiences and encyclopaedic knowledge on all things elasmobranch. I have never met a shark in real life, but thanks to my recent deep dive (haha) with fish illustrations, I have become rather fascinated. To be honest, some of the terminology is just marvellous.
The head shape of these sharks is called a cephalofoil, and the snout is peppered with ampullae of Lorenzini – the organs which sense the electric field of the prey. As mentioned, bonnetheads are omnivorous, and 40-60% of their diet is made up of seagrass but they also eat fish, crustaceans and other protein-rich foods. Like all fish, they have a lateral line which senses water pressure, thus allowing them to work out how deep they are in the water, and also where their shoal-mates are when grouped together.
Here are my sketches from the evening. I used gouache, and my new deep sea watercolours for the backgrounds (they really need watercolour or rag paper to fully express their granulation).
