Whew! I'm done with finals! Hooray!!! I cannot believe how quickly the first term came and went. Similarly, I cannot believe how much we crammed into essentially a 2 month period. Finals were intense and I pulled my first all nighter of the school year. I thought that was pretty good. I was expecting to have to pull more than that, but I'm so glad I didn't have to. I guess I'm getting old. I am now faced with 4 weeks of free time which I hope to productively fill.
REDWOOD FOREST in SCRATCH BOARD
One of my finals was to be done in scratch board. The bat was done with the same technique. I decided that for this final, I wanted to really challenge myself and tackle a more complicated subject. I am more than capable of rendering a single specimen in great detail. Capturing an entire scene, however, was imagery I had yet to try. I am in love with the redwood forests that line the coast of California and Oregon. I love that every sense is aroused. The smells in the air, the feel of the ground, the glimmer of light bouncing back and forth, and the wonderful tastes to be foraged. These are all things that I wanted to capture in my illustration along with scale and atmosphere. Originally, I had intended on including animals in redwood forests, but that would have been even more complicated than the already complex idea I had at hand. Instead, I focused on common plants found within redwood forests such as wood fern, sword fern, sorrel, rhododendron, manzanita, and oyster mushroom. I'm really glad I went in this direction. It was very satisfying at the end.
PHOTOSHOP and ILLUSTRATOR RENDERING
My final for Information Graphics was equally intense. I love painting in Photoshop. I love the intensity you can achieve on the computer. Not that you can't get intensity with traditional medium because you definitely can, but you end up with this super clean rendering that at least I've only been able to create with the computer. I chose to render jellies because they are beautiful and challenging to capture because of the transparency factor. I managed to discover the perfect combination of tools to recreate jellies. I hope to be as successful when rendering something else! I also wanted to combine elements from past assignments such as labeling, simple line rendering, and layout/map organization. I should also mention that I'm not totally sure the diagram is accurate. I used my best judgement based on diagrams of different species of jellies (just in case any of you reading this are jelly connoisseurs).
The last final was really fun. I don't have a picture. Sorry. It was for the Field Sketching class. We had to find a specimen that was unknown to us and identify it through sketched observations, meaning we had to try and identify the specimen using only our sketches. The specimen I found was a yellow sand verbena, a trailing beach succulent native to California.
Well, I'm very much looking forward to next term as our projects will become more complex. There are so many things to consider when illustrating science and it is so exciting to be learning constantly about what you are doing. I heart science illustration.
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