Hello hello! So, for symposium, I decided to paint two things: the mushroom and the feathers. I've told you about the scientific portions of both of these things, so I guess the best thing for me to do is to walk you through my artistic process.

Before starting any major work, the best thing to do is to leave at least a one inch border all around. From there, you can get to sketching.

The next thing I like to do is look for the lightest pigmented color in my specimen and go over the entire piece with that. I like to go from light to dark and build up my colors.
*See post 02/01/19 for an example of this

This can become a bit tedious, but I think I brings the piece more dimension and life. I also tend to favor not doing color swatches. Taboo, yes, but hear me out.

I've done enough pieces where I have kept color swatches and the results don't come out the same and I start to freak out because I've followed what I did to a tee. By removing color swatches, I take away that sense of panic within myself. Also, I may view a piece a certain way one day, and it changes the next. I believe my paintings and renderings should resemble that, so I don't leave myself a clear road map.

Hence, this,

becoming this.

And, this, 

Becoming that.

I was advised to add small sketches of the birds the feathers came from leading to the final result of the feather piece to be...

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Today is the first day back in class, and it's a work day. I never had a chance to do quick sketches of them, so I did that today. Just in case you forgot what they looked like, here are pictures to jog  your memory.

Here are my renderings of these three photographs. 

As I was painting, I was able to grab Dr. Moore's attention. He told me I was right in my identification of the little blue heron, scientifically known as Egretta caerulea. The white bird, to my surprise, is also a little blue heron! You can tell because of their leg color. With it being white faced, its scientific name is the Egretta novaehollandiae. The more you know!

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Hello there friends. I am still on spring break. I can't do much field wise, but I have taken this time to sit and begin to render some of my specimens and pictures I have taken.

This is called a "death cap" scientifically known as the Amanita sp. The sp. means that the particular species is kind of a toss up. This particular mushrooms is not edible. Remember, I cam across this on March 1, 2019 the second time I went to the Abacoa Greenway. This particular photograph was snapped at 10:46 AM. The resulting rendering is as follows.

​When it came down to rendering, I forgot my burnt sienna watercolor. To make lemonade out of lemons, I tried my best to recreate the color with burn umber, yellow ochre, a touch of lemon yellow, crimson red, and white water color. Naturally, I couldn’t quite get the color I wanted. 
 
Compared to the photo, the fungi looks pretty good I’d say, but the color matching is horrendous. Will I redo this one? Probably.

I do like this, but for symposium, I think I'm going to go with the mushroom.

Word Count: 235

​To make up for last week’s trip, I went to a place called Freedom Park in my hometown of Naples, Florida. Freedom Park is a 50 acres and is comprised of freshwater marshes and low-lying wetlands. Before restoration, this land was overrun with invasive species such as the Brazilian pepper. After some TLC, the invasive species were removed, native species of plants were put in, overgrown foliage was dealt with, and the fauna has been thriving. There are a variety of native species you can see including alligators, ibises, and more!

I saw birds and naturally I hid behind my mom (she is smaller than I am so you can imagine how ridiculous that looked). The opportunity was too great to pass up so I sent my brother to photograph the birds instead. Here are some of my favorite shots. ​

The birds in question were spotted at 2:00 PM on the boardwalk portion of the park. From what I can tell, the blue bird was a little blue heron and I am unsure of the white bird. That’ll be a question for Dr. Moore next week. 

Word Count: 186

I’m a sucker for texture and lines. Mushrooms were the absolute last thing I thought would have all the things I wanted. 

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