Denys Ovenden

Who is Denys Ovenden?

Denys Ovenden was born on April 1, 1922. His preoccupation with drawing began very early, since there are drawings on the fly-leaves of books from that period. His natural history interest began.

Watercolor is the basic medium for his work, with occasional gouache for highlighting or detail. His preferred working surface is a fashion type board, CS2 not surface being the favorite.

Reference sources are most important, and Denys uses a body-live, pinned or pickled, to work from, as pinned and set specimens can be misleading due to shrinkage, discoloration or loss of parts. He does use photographs although these vary enormously in terms of color bias. He uses textbook or specialist handbooks to confirm details of mouth parts, wing venation and other identification features. '

Denys Ovenden began his studies at Hornsey College of Art in 1938, with a five-year break from 1942 to December 1946 in the Royal Engineers, most of which was spent in North Africa and Italy. In 1950 he began working as a freelance illustrator, for London Zoo, The Radio Times, Crawfords Advertising Agency and Collins. A lot of time was also spent working with fellow ex-students at the Waverly Studio.