audubon2019

[audubon2019]

Our last field trip was to Grassy Waters Everglades Preserve. I walked most of the path and took plenty of pictures but I didn’t spend too much time drawing while I was there because there wasn’t much room to sit down in the areas where I found things that were interesting. We saw 1 small gator and a very thin snake (Although I didn’t get any pictures of the snake because I didn’t want to get that close.) I spotted a Florida redbelly turtle when we were walking back to the entrance so I took a quick picture. I started trying to draw it in my sketchbook but it wasn’t coming out right so I switched to using the Autodesk Sketchbook app on my iPad. I’ve never tried painting realistically with digital art so I didn’t expect it to go well, but the log the turtle was sitting on came out pretty well (I really regret not taking a time lapse of it). It’s not done yet but I've attached a progress picture. I have swatches of all the colors I used as well as the line art I initially made. When I draw digitally, I don’t like using a white background so I usually set it to gray and I begin by sketching in a bright red or blue with my F pencil because I like those colors. I used several layers and tools. I will list the tools used below but it is important to remember that I’ve edited many of these tools from their factory settings so they won’t match the same tool on a different device. (Also the brushes are not named there are just pictures)

Materials

All 4 blur brushes

F, 2B, 9B pencils

4th texture brush

Hard eraser

Soft eraser

lasso

[audubon2019]

So I’m a person who prefers sunny beaches over a grassy trail, but our next location for class was the Abacoa Greenway. We got to learn a bit about how and why this nature hotspot was built in the middle of a pretty urban area. There was no shortage of plants to draw or sceneries but I settled on drawing a Pycnoporus sanguineus, a bright orange fungus that was growing on a fallen branch. I actually didn’t find this; my friend did and they picked up a bunch of them and brought them over in case some people hadn’t settled on what to draw. I drew the specimen from 2 angles and used Prismacolor colored pencils as well as Arteza Watercolors.

Materials

Paper Mate 0.7mm mechanical pencil

Sheaffer Sentinel Mechanical Pencil (HB lead I think but not sure)

Prismacolor colored pencils

Orange

Sienna

Crimson Red

Arteza

Vermillion Red

Orange Yellow

Yellow Ochre

Burnt Sienna

Burnt Umber

Noir

[audubon2019]

In addition to Audubon, I also take Biodiversity and we went to the Arboretum to find examples of different types of plant (ex: gymnosperms, angiosperms, etc.). While there I spotted a plant that I didn’t see the last time I was there for Audubon: Plumbago auriculata. This plant has blue flowers and that's what caught my eye. I sketched out this piece with a mechanical pencil and then layered watercolor over it. The pencil marks showed through the watercolor so I covered up parts of it with Prismacolor pencils to see how that would look, but I decided I liked how it looked without it better. This piece ended up becoming the basis for my symposium piece.

Materials

Prismacolor pencils

Violet Blue

True Blue

Arteza Watercolor Paints

Light Green

Sap Green

Deep Green

Raw Umber

Phthalo Blue

Prussian Blue

Ultramarine Blue

Cobalt Blue (main color for flowers)

Burnt Umber

Orange Yellow

Gamboge

Yellow Ochre

Washi Tape

[audubon2019]

As I mentioned in my last post, we took 2 trips to Coral Cove. For our second trip, I chose to draw seashells that had washed up on shore. All the shells were drawn to show their actual sizes (so some were pretty small) Except for the larger one closer to the bottom of the page. This shell was curved and I since it was broken, I only knew what the inside looked like. I sketched all of these with pencil and then used watercolor.

Materials

Paper Mate 0.7mm mechanical pencil

Arteza Watercolor Paints

Scarlet Red

Gamboge

Orange Yellow

Yellow Ochre

[audubon2019]

During this course, we took 2 trips to Coral Cove, a beach not too far from our Jupiter campus. The first thing I noticed during the visit was the odd bubbles on the beach. These turned out to be Portuguese Man O’ Wars, a marine hydrozoan that looks a lot like a jellyfish. Recent storms and the generally rough waves caused a lot of them to wash up on to the shore. Even though they were probably dead, their stingers were still active so we had to be careful while we were there. I picked one to draw that was a bit closer to the water than most. This one still had a lot of its color so I guess it hadn’t been there long. I lightly sketched it out and then used a mix of watercolors and colored pencils to draw it.

After I finished that, I draw some of the rocks on the beach In my photo they look kind of brownish gray but in the sun they looked more orange. I used the same process to add color to this piece as the Man O’ War.

Materials

Paper Mate 0.7mm mechanical pencil

Prismacolor pencils

True Blue

Violet

orange

Arteza Watercolor

Camboge

Orange Yellow

Yellow Ochre

Noir

Burnt Sienna

Raw Umber

[audubon2019]

Just like our first assignment, we were some time to find a subject to draw from outside. This time I found a snail steinkern, which is a fossil that forms when a form sediment enters a hollow, natural object — in this case, a snail shell— and it remains even after the original object it filled dissolves away. I found it by the red bike rack next to the EC building in a pile of rocks. Since this just shows the inside of the snail shell I couldn’t identify the type of snail it may have belonged to.

I sketched this piece with pencil and a sharpie pen then used Arteza watercolors to add color.

Materials

Paper Mate 0.7mm mechanical pencil

Black sharpie pen (Fine)

Arteza Watercolor

Deep Green

Raw Umber

[audubon2019]

Hatching is a drawing technique that uses parallel lines to act as shading to give a piece depth. To help us improve this skill, the class was given references of Pinecones (the last 2) and tasked with trying to redraw them with ink or pen.

I began by sketching out the general shape of the first pinecone in pencil. To keep myself from getting confused by which scale I was drawing— which was happening a lot— I scanned the reference into Autodesk Sketchbook and numbered them on a separate layer. Then wrote the numbers on my piece as I drew it. I inked the piece with Rollerball pen and a sharpie pen. I drew the first pinecone over the course of a few days.

I tried to repeat the process for the second reference, the cross-section of a pinecone but ended up just drawing a smaller version of it with much less detail. (We just needed to do 1 large one and the other as allowed to be smaller.)

The only real issue I had with this piece is that the ink from the Rollerball pen comes out very liquid and takes a while to dry (even when it looks dry it's not!) so I smudged the piece in a few places.

Materials

Black inc. R-2 Rollerball 0.7mm

Black sharpie pen (Fine)

Papermate mechanical pencil

H&B white eraser

[audubon2019]

So for our third class, we got to look at different objects in Professor Moore’s collection. He had various shells, bones (from a dolphin and a rat I think), crystals, etc. I chose to draw a copy of an Egyptian Scarab, an amethyst crystal, and a Chestnut cowry shell. The scarab wasn’t going too well so I moved on to the crystals.

In addition to these items, we all had to draw a Ball Moss (Tillandsia recurvata). I rendered mine completely in pencil mainly because it was already confusing to sketch so coloring it didn't seem appealing.

Materials

Paper Mate 0.7mm mechanical pencil

Sheaffer mechanical pencil (HB lead I think but not sure)

H&B white eraser and kneaded eraser

H&B blending stump

H&B shading pencils

5H

B

2B

6B

Prismacolor Premier colored pencils

True Blue

Canary Yellow

Chartreuse

Light Aqua

Lilac

Violet

Violet Blue

[audubon2019]

In my last class, we learned about the life of Audubon, who our course is named after. He was an ornithologist and painter who traveled North American to record every bird he could find.

After our lesson, we went to the Arboretum to find a subject to draw. I chose to draw one of the Scorpion Tail plants (near a Live Oak tree). I didn’t get very far with my drawing on location, only a basic sketch, but I did figure out which pencils to use to get a color close to that of the leaves. I wanted to draw the flowers found at the top of the plant so I drew the specimen from a top-view but it came out looking a bit flat, so in the future, I will try and draw plants from a less direct angle.

Materials:

Paper Mate 0.7mm mechanical pencil

H&B white eraser

2B H&B pencil

5H H&B pencil

Prisma color pencils

Violet Blue

Canary Yellow

Apple Green

Grass Green

Dark Brown

White

[audubon2019]

My first assignment in Audubon seems simple enough: we were given ten minutes to find something outside to bring back to be our subject. I chose a piece of Florida Pusley— the white flower weeds that tend to take over Florida lawns.

I haven’t used colored pencils in a while so this piece took me a few hours. I began with a small to-scale sketch near the top left corner of my paper to get an idea for the basic silhouette. Then I began the larger, more detailed drawing. After getting a basic sketch done with pencil, I erased the lines and began coloring. For the green parts of the plant, I started by lightly shading the area with yellow and then built up colors with two green colored pencils. Since the actual flowers on the weed are mostly white with some purple, I used a violet colored pencil on the tips of each flower petal and gradually made it lighter towards the center of the flower. I used my white Prismacolor pencil to blend out the colors.

Materials:

Paper Mate 0.7mm mechanical pencil

Bic blue ballpoint pen

Pink eraser

Prisma color pencils

Violet

Canary Yellow

Apple Green

Grass Green

Crimson Red

Dark Brown

White