Blog #6: #Witnessing the beauty of the Abacoa Greenway + Sketching Various Organisms

Updated: Mar 2, 2022

Hi everyone! Welcome to the latest rendition of Arielle's Audubon Scientific Illustration blog! Today we went on our second field trip in our class, Audubon Scientific Illustration. We traversed through the pine forest along the Abacoa Greenway. Throughout my four hour journey in the preserve, I attempted to maintain a keen eye towards what I saw in the Greenway. In fact, I walked through the preserve, in the same areas, multiple times in order to gain a better understanding of the area and the organisms inside of it. This was my first time in there, after all, so I was not quite sure what to expect.

I was super excited to see any gopher tortoises, as I had understood they were common in the preserve. I was delighted when a saw a crowd gathered around my professor as he demonstrated and lectured about a gopher tortoise and its burrow. Indeed, he held one of the tortoises in his hands. Not only did we see one tortoise, but also another one across the street in the northern section of the Abacoa Greenway. They were so cute! I took many pictures of the tortoises, as they were very adorable!

I was also delighted that upon soon entering the Greenway, we were confronted by a red shouldered hawk. I was glad I was able to bring my professional camera and gain some good shots of the hawk as my phone's camera would certainly not suffice, since the camera does not work well long distances.

My goal for today's class was to sketch as much as what I could be interested in depicting. Which, suffice to say, was a lot. I hope we are able to make the journey back here next week, that way we can see if we can spot any more unique organisms and take more field notes and details about the organism we'd like to render.

While in the field I made sure to create maps of where I found my art subjects, although they were very rough. I also took note of colors, texture, and the scientific name of the objects I observed. Additionally, I also made note of the source of light as well, in addition to weather, date, and time. Some organisms such as a daisy I sketched, I was able to obtain measurements for, others such as the red shouldered hawk, I was not.

I also must decide what I would like to draw. I took many, many reference photos of what I saw, some of which I'll show below. My very rough sketches I took in the field are also below. I found that it was quite difficult for me to draw while standing up, as I didn't want to sit on the ground and have ants/insects craw over my body (I'm practically an insect magnet!).

After coming home from the field, I decided to produce some less rough sketches of the subjects I was more inclined to illustrate. For example, I made multiple colored sketches of the red shouldered hawk. However, after reading Ann Swan's (2010) chapter on fine details in botanical illustrations, I decided that investing in a fine embossing tool might be incredibly useful. Especially for the hawk drawing as well as if I decide to draw any plants.