SAY HELLO TO BOTH...

BRANDEN MELENDEZ

Branden is the other male in the program. Yay! Branden's background is in anthropology and much of the work he created during the year reflected this passion. He does wonderful, stylized historic figures with great attention to their wardrobe. Below is a beautifully rendered metate in stipple. He shows us both the top and side view of it. I am very impressed by the elegance of the drawing. It is really challenging to render stone and smooth surfaces in stipple.

EVA LANGHORST

Eva's energy is contagious. She is lively and funny and makes the whole class laugh. I really appreciate her spirit and of course, her talent. Her illustrations are always unique and fun. She can always provide a different angle of perspective. Below is a wonderful illustration of parasites found in and on a common house cat. I think it is a charming illustration and captures both the tenderness of sleeping with your cat and the eeriness of unfriendly parasites that lurk around. You can see more of her work at www.scienceillustration.de.

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK

Hi! It's been a really long time and it's time to catch everyone up. Let's see...since my last post, I've finished the Science Illustration Program at CSUMB, was taken on an amazing two week vacation to Costa Rica and finally, I just arrived to Yosemite National Park where I begin my first journey as a science illustrator.

Our last final was June 3, 2010. If you can recall from previous posts, the four classes we had in our final term were Zoological Illustration, Botanical Illustration, Applied Techniques in Science Illustration and Interactivity of Information Graphics. Below are images of my final projects. I haven't quite figured out how to post animations but will do so once I have. We had to create a simple flash animation for our graphics class. The topic I chose was tree ring growth. I can't wait to share it with all of you. Meanwhile you can enjoy my other finals. :)

PLANT USAGES

This piece was for Botanical Illustration. The assignment was called "Plant Usages," and I chose marijuana as my topic. I created a timeline of relevant dates within the history of marijuana usage.

TRANSIENT

This painting depicts threatened or endangered migratory animals that we often don't initially think of when thinking about migrating animals.

Mexican free-tailed bat
Burrowing owl
African wild dog
Wild yak
Finless porpoise
Pacific spiny lobster

I painted this piece on reclaimed drywall not only to contrast the general lifestyle of mankind to the transient nature of migrators, but also to remind the viewer of the amount of waste that is generated in order to have the lifestyle we lead.

SCIENCE NOTES

Science Notes is on-line zine that is written by the students of the Science Communication Program at UC Santa Cruz. Both this program and our program (when it was at UC Santa Cruz) started at the same time. For the last 20 some years, the illustrators of our program have teamed up with writers of the Science Communication Program to create illustrations for their articles. Every year, the finished work is published on Science Notes. The author of the story is Jane (yes, Jane) Palmer. Her story is called Cultivating Autism. This illustration shows the scientist in the article working over a petri dish of cultivated stem cells. It's a wonderful article. I don't think the latest articles/illustrations are published yet, but when they are, I will post another little shout out about it! Yay!

That about sums up what May/early June looked like for me. After school, I was swooped away on a much needed vacation to Costa Rica. Sadly, I forgot to take my camera with me and I don't have a single picture. So our vacation will have to remain a very precious secret between me and Thayer. I will mention, however, that I got to hold lots of snakes. Awesome.

So here I am in Yosemite National Park in the town of Wawona. I just got here and am settling in and already, I watched a botanist (one of my housemates) make his own beer, am in the process of making plans to go on 8 day backpacking trips to Sequoia to observe toads and join researchers as they capture and tag spotted owls. Tomorrow, with the batteries to my camera fully charged, I look forward to taking and sharing many pictures of how my life looks here at the Livingston House at Wawona Station.