Costa Rica Nature Journal/Sketching Workshop ~ 4

Morning starts early in the tropics, in our case this first day, it started quite a bit before 5:19, when the howlers started up. Around 4:30am, a muffled "knocking" started up out in the forest. It was obviously a call of some kind, but it wasn't until later that Gerardo, the lodge naturalist, identified it for us as a Pacific Screech Owl. I have screech owls at home and they sure don't sound like THAT. I wonder how they make that odd sound....

Then howler monkey roars began rolling through the dark air, and it was time to rise. There is something "right" somehow about the howler calls. I feel resentful about my alarm clock going off at home, sometimes, but I don't get upset with the howlers, even when they start up at 4:30am. It would be like getting upset because the sun rises. Dang!

I was restless this first night, anyway, and had gone out to sit on my veranda at 3:30am, to admire the stars shining through a sparsely-leafed cecropia tree and look for the Southern Cross constellation. A haiku came to me:

Cecropia's black lace
frames the Southern Cross.
Starshine lights the footpath.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not certain I actually saw the Southern Cross there, but it made such a nice haiku I couldn't resist. Oh well.

This first day was one in which I wanted to get acquainted with my students (the first two, Jocelyn and Marilyn, at least ~ Kathy was scheduled to arrive the next day, the first day of class.) After breakfast, during which Gerardo set up the scope on the open deck of the restaurant and we began seeing tropical birds close-up, we started off down the trail to the beach talking and stopping to admire frogs, butterflies and flowers.

It was a beautiful day ~ the first of many, and we each went at our own pace, scattered down the beach. Patrolling the spindrift, I surprised a coati (in Costa Rica it's called a pizote ~ say "pee-SO-tay") digging up a sea turtle nest and eating the eggs. I got some terrific photos, and hoped it would wait for Jocelyn and Marilyn to come along, but all they got to see were the deep hole and scattered leathery eggshells.

I think now might be a good time to talk about some journaling principles. There are many schools of thought on how to make journals, and I subscribe to the tenet "It's YOUR journal; do it however you please." When I create a journal, I want it to be a record of my journey.

For instance, consider this pizote raiding the turtle nest. It certainly wouldn't have stood still for me to draw it at its nefarious task, so I took several photos, then later that day I drew the scene from the screen on my camera. I feel fine about putting things in my journal ~ writing, drawings, ephemera (stuff that gets glued or taped in) ~ that I have actually experienced. Sometimes I leave an empty space if I can't add something in the moment, and go back to it later. Sometimes MUCH later. Maybe, even, after I return home.

Additionally, I have decided that in my journals, it's okay to use resource photos, even ones from magazines or online, to decorate a page if I actually experienced that scene myself. For instance, I drew the flying toucan in the clickable journal page above just this morning, using photos I found in my files. But I actually saw this particular kind of toucan flying from a tree exactly that way, during this trip. To me, that is valid journal stuff. Others might have a different journaling ethic, but that's mine.

Design is important, too. On the page with the "band-aid," above, I journaled the text into a freeform shape, leaving room all around it for adding drawings or ephemera later. Later that morning, I added a quick sketch of the zone-tailed hawk. Other things were put in later on. A journal like this can't be planned out entirely in advance, but it adds interest to vary the page design, and text is one area in which you can quickly give it shape.

After a leisurely paddle in the sun-warmed potholes at the ocean's edge, I sat in the shade of a big black rock and sketched the beach. Later I walked about 500 feet north, turned around, and sketched the big black rock from the shade of one of the palm trees in the first picture. The two pages face each other in the journal, making a great visual reminder of that marvelous solitary place. You'll notice I added watercolor pencil color to one of them, but I haven't gotten around to coloring the other. I might not. If you look closely at the colored one, you'll see that the final golden sand coloring wasn't painted in ~ I like the pencil texture; it makes believable sand.

This initial trip to the beach was part of my workshop preparation. I like to prepare personal examples of what I ask from my students, so the sketches were examples of the sorts of things they might decide to sketch. Additionally, I wanted to collect things for them to draw in the classroom.

So late that afternoon I started back up the path to the wildlife lodge with a bag full of goodies for the first class, tired from jetlag, a long day sketching in the tropical sun, and the half-hour climb up the steep trail ~ but supremely happy and satisfied with my first day at El Remanso.

Costa Rica Nature Journal/Sketching Workshop ~ 3

Plane rides can be deadly dull as well as leg cramping and other assorted evils. I always request a window seat so at least sometimes there is something interesting to see. Going south out of Medford takes one close to Mt. Shasta, but from the west side of the plane I could only see Lake Shasta, so I drew that. Sketching through a plane window requires speed ~ the dang pilot won't circle back around if you miss details the first time.

That occupied me quite some time, and we arrived in LA just in time to sink the sun. After finding my next terminal and getting some dinner, I began "profiling" the women around Gate 45. Adriana, who makes all arrangements at El Remanso, had told me that two of my students would be taking the same flight to San José as I, and I had a fine time watching for them, discarding some easily, wondering about others, checking a few out by peering at luggage tags and even striking up a few conversations. But to no avail. In the end, my students, Marilyn and Jocelyn, found me, having looked up my picture online. Out maneuvered! They seemed exceptionally nice. I started to relax.

This was the red-eye flight to Costa Rica, and we arrived at SJO quite early, to be picked up by Carlos, holding up a sign saying "El Remanso, Irene, Madelin and Vaselyn." From then on, Marilyn answered to Madelin and Jocelyn to Vaselyn ~ "Madelin" does sound like a Spanish version of Marilyn, but we never did quite figure out "Vaselyn."

Carlos was a charming Tico (what Costa Ricans call themselves), and he spirited us away downtown for breakfast since it was quite some time till our flights down to the Osa Peninsula. Traffic was hair-raising, but Carlos is obviously an old hand at driving his turismo van, and scarcely blinked as he threaded his way through downtown San José to take us to a special restaurant, one with some atmosphere, when we told him Denny's wasn't our first choice for our first Costa Rican breakfast.

We started to inhale the essence of Costa Rica as the waiter made us coffee Costa Rica style, pouring steaming water through ground beans in a bag, into a tin pitcher. It was absolutely delicious, as were the gallos pinto (rice and beans) served on a banana leaf, which the others had, and my fried platanos (a large, starchy type of banana). We treated Carlos to breakfast as well, and got acquainted with each other over breakfast.

Then, much sooner than we wished, Carlos hustled us back into the van and we returned to the airports ~ I to Sansa, the others to NatureAir, for the trip to El Remanso.

A little crowd gathered when I started sketching in the Sansa terminal. First I drew the parking lot, practicing the modified contour technique on the cars ~ you just run your pen around the outline without lifting it from the paper. It makes a nice, fresh drawing, and gives an interesting tilt to inanimate things.

As it warmed up, I went inside, drawing the people and practicing my titling font ~ it's a fun font, very vacation-y and with the freedom to make any given letter look different every time you draw it. I don't mind if people watch when I draw. It amuses them, and it's such a crowd pleaser.....I don't think I'm a show-off, but when you can give people pleasure just by doing something you enjoy, why not?

The trip down the southern half of Costa Rica takes almost an hour, and passes over coffee, pineapple and banana plantations, plus a lot of forested mountains and along the coast, mangrove swamps. It's a fairly low flight, so the scenery is very visible and fascinating.

Adriana and Elyer were there to pick me up at the airport for the eleven mile drive to El Remanso. We were delighted to see howler monkeys in the trees along the way, but I was even more delighted to arrive and settle in a little.

I packed up my sketchbook, binoculars and camera and headed up the road, sketching and photographing tropical marvels to my heart's content. By the time the sun sank into the sea at 5:39, I was lounging by the pool sipping a margarita.

Ah, the life.......the good life.

Costa Rica Nature Journal/Sketching Workshop ~ 2

I started planning this workshop after giving a nature sketching workshop at El Remanso Wildlife Lodge last April. I was excited about it, because I love the location so much and it is such a high to share El Remanso ~ and sketching and journaling as well ~ with other like-minded artists. I always sketch and journal when I go there, and over the years I have developed many techniques I knew were worth sharing.

The workshop had so much going for it (superb location, popular subject, people with the February doldrums), I expected it would be a good one. I advertised it in The Artist's Magazine and got nearly a hundred requests for information, and eventually I had three students enrolled. While I have taught for many years, I haven't had time to develop a strong workshop following yet among international workshop attendees, and several professionals I spoke with felt this was a quite respectable enrollment. It just takes time.

A few days before departure, I started preparing my journal, a 6x9 spiral bound book, with hefty #110 paper good for pencil and ink drawings and light watercolors. It's small enough to carry everywhere but large enough for decent sketches.

Decorating the cover came next. My sister-in-law, Marcia, makes lovely hand-dyed scarves, and the blotter paper underlying the scarves gets decorated in gorgeous, unpredicatable patterns. I glued a beautifully dyed sheet of this onto the front of my journal, then printed out a title on my computer and glued that on. Then, to waterproof it for the humid climate, I taped it with transparent package tape.

Using an exacto blade, I made two slits in the back cover and inserted brass fasteners (see the photos) to which I attached an elastic band. This worked perfectly, and kept the pages from flopping open unexpectedly.

Inside the cover, I arranged things pretty much the same as I had in my Hawaii Journal (see previous posts): with a photocopied ruler taped along the upper edge, business cards, and an acetate pocket taped on two sides to hold ephemera ~ things I might want to add to the journal later, extra business cards (and sometimes just to hold things safely until I needed them during my travels).

On the first journal page, I glued a map of Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula, with an inset of Central America to show where Costa Rica is and where the Osa is in Costa Rica. I also marked where El Remanso is on the Osa. I used this map a number of times to show curious strangers where I was going.

Since I'd visited El Remanso before, I knew that the people there (and perhaps my students as well) would be interested in my ongoing travails with a ten-inch snowstorm (so alien to tropical dwellers), which had me snowbound for nearly a week just before leaving. As if that weren't enough, a previous deep freeze had cracked a water pipe, and due to the deep snow the pump repairmen couldn't come fix it ~ so I was using snow-water for all my needs for several days.

So the next two pages showed my snowbound world, with a view out the front door which included snowdrifts and the toboggan which hauls wood to feed my woodstove (I have an oil furnace, but I'd rather burn wood for environmental reasons, given a choice).

During my enforced snowbound solitude, I wrote a semi-humorous poem to start off my trip, entitled "Preamble to a Journey to Costa Rica." I hope you enjoy it ~ be sure to click on that graphic to enlarge it enough to read. One reason I included it was that as part of the workshop I teach ways to use poetry to enhance a journal, and this makes a good example.

Finally, my driveway melted enough for me to slither out and do some last minute shopping and take a shower down at Dan's house (snow water heated on the stove does NOT a good shower make!), and the next day I was on my way.

Since luggage does disappear, I wore clothes I could wear repeatedly with overnight laundering if necessary (safari pants with zipoff legs are a must), and I boarded the plane carrying my journal, a pen, camera and binoculars, and all of my workshop supplies in my carry-on luggage so that if my belongings got lost my workshop could go on.

Dan drove me to the airport, with promises to look after Jesse-the-CurlyTailed-Cat. And now, having gotten myself fairly launched, I'll continue this saga tomorrow.

Nature Journaling/Sketching Workshop in Costa Rica

Mom always said if you make a booboo it's best to 'fess up and get it off your chest right away, then you can get on with life.

Even if it's really embarrassing? Particularly if it is.

So here we go with the embarrassing booboo, and it's a hummer. But before I do that, I want to report that the workshop was terrific. The weather was perfect, the workshop attendees were A-one super people, our rooms and the surroundings at El Remanso Wildlife Lodge were awe-inspiring, we were looked after by a great staff with superabundant grace and good humor, and we all had a wonderful time. After the workshop, I gave a mini-workshop for two of the Costa Rican staff (Gerardo and Elyer). Then I took a trip to the Monte Verde Cloud Forest (more later), which went even better than expected. I'd estimate that I took 500-600 absolutely terrific photos. My best ever. It was a great trip.

So what's the problem?

In my defense, (weak, but it's all I have) let's say that the day before catching my plane I traveled five hours in a local bus across Costa Rica (3 of those hours on a dusty, bumpy dirt road), then stayed up later that night than usual. Then I got up at 5:15, still sleepy. I packed up my little carrybag with my sketchbook and pen and watercolor pencils, a couple of things to nibble on, and not much else, then Joel left me, my suitcase, and my pack off at the airport in San José, Costa Rica, for the trip home. I checked both my bags through, so I wouldn't have to carry so much. I was a little concerned that airport security won't let us lock or seal bags. But hey, what's the choice.

And I put my camera, containing the memory card with all those wonderful photos, in my little travel pack, zipped it up and checked it. Duh. Do I really have to finish this, mom????

If I had been smart, or even present inside my skull, I would have at least removed the teensy memory card and tucked it into my wallet. Or I could have transferred the contents of the memory card to a light-weight CD the day before and carried THAT with me -- I had an opportunity to do it.

That way, whoever pilfered the camera (a nice little Canon PowerShot A540 worth about $225 when I bought it a couple of years ago) would have gotten only the camera, not the pictures, too. [Hey, can I get a do-over?]

But still, it really was a perfect trip, and I have a journal full of sketches, poems, notes and ephemera to prove it, but the photos you see in this these workshop blog entries will be those of Marilyn, Jocelyn and Kathy, my generous students, who have given me permission to use them.

And PLEASE, learn from my stupendously addlepated mistake [she sighs and wipes her hands briskly, glad to be finished with the nasty task of confessing her blunder].

[brightening, with a sheepish grin] So now, tomorrow, come back and I will show-and-tell you what transpired during our four-day Nature Sketching/Journaling Workshop (and other related adventures).
See you then!

My Hawaii Nature Journal ~ Watercolor Pencil Orchid

Vacations are BUMMERS! Well actually, the bummer is when you get home from Hawaii in your sunglasses and safari shorts and tanned knees and turn into an instant icicle with snow globbing up on your cold blue knees!

I'm exaggerating just the tiniest bit....I was glad to see Daniel again, and to have a chance to share with him some of my best adventures as he took time off from work to drive me to my house. But that stinker was chuckling as he took this picture of me in front of my house (if I cut him a little slack I have to admit I probably would have been chuckling wickedly, too, if I were him).....

But it ain't FAIR! I've experienced a blizzard with 3" of snow, 60mph winds, downed trees, a 36 hour power outage and about 3½" of rain in the paltry thirteen days I've been back, and it has me vowing to retire early, move to Hawaii and live a life of ease, doing a painting every few days to sell at a nearby gallery to pay for my coconuts and margaritas....... ah, such are my dreams.....

Actually, today I wanted to show you how my photo of the orchid turned into a watercolor pencil painting in my journal. I'm going to show you how I did it, step-by-step, so you can see if this is something you might want to try yourself (if you aren't already an accomplished watercolor pencillist). Be sure to click on the pictures to see them close-up. (Does anyone happen to know what kind of orchid this is? Even just the genus, or maybe a common name?)

The orchid of which I took the original photo in the Hawai'i Tropical Botanical Park wasn't perfect and it showed raindrops and some wear. I decided to not show blemishes or water drops on my finished painting.

Since my main aim was to play/practice with the watercolor pencils, I didn't make any effort to draw a freehand outline. I brought up the photo in Photoshop, made a new layer, and traced the orchid to create an outline drawing (#1).

Then I printed out just the outline drawing (#2). Since I wanted the painting to be on the same paper as the rest of my journal, i.e. heavy paper that would take water without buckling or pilling, I pulled a sheet from the back of my journal and ran that through my printer to print the outline on.

Using just the pencils in the 12-color Staedtler set (I'm not promoting this brand particularly ~ it's just one I got cheap because the metal box was bent. But these pencils do a fine job, as do many other brands), I chose a lime green to start out the color (#3). You'll notice that there's not a lot of color there, because when it is wet, the color will spread and intensify. I tested out what it would do by making some trial swatches at the bottom of the sheet.

Next I wet the green, and when that was dry I put in the yellow center then started adding spots (#4) . Always start with muted background colors then put bright colors over them. If you forget and start with the bright colors (a pinkish red, or cerise, in this case), you'll have to be extra careful not to let them bleed as you try to mop in a subtle background around them.

Let wet areas dry before putting on more pencil if you want to control the colors even a little. If you pencil into a wet areas, it will make a really sharp mark that won't blend in very well with the brush. Experiment in your trial swatch area.

Next it was time to finish the cerise markings (#5), but on looking at the photo I decided to use a more orangish red to tone down the pink. I also added in some blue to give shadows, then wet it again.

It was looking rather pale against the white background, so I decided to make it pop out of the page with a contrasty black/blue/green background (#6). I blended this in really dark with all three pencils at once before adding color. Only part of it was added here (in #6), and I wet it to see how far out it would extend. Actually, I didn't have to add any more in the darkened background areas since I found I could pull the dark color sufficiently far away from the center with the watered brush.

I finished up with the remaining background areas (#8)(oops, there never was a #7!), and painted in a bluer contrast in the center areas. For these areas, I've just wet my brush and dabbed some color off the pencil point and painted that on.

I didn't try to copy all the ferns and leaves in the background of the original photo, since they would have drawn attention away from the orchid. And I didn't add the storm damage on the lower flower lip, either. Here's the photo again, to check it against.

If you'd like to try this as a tutorial, you can click on drawing #2 and copy and paste it to any program that will print it out. MSWord would work. Print on very heavy paper with some tooth or roughness to make it work best with water. Then color your own version!

In fact, you can sit at your computer, click on the link to get the big picture, and see right in front of you exactly how this orchid was done, step-by-step (and try your own flourishes if you prefer ;^)

When I was finished, I wanted to put the orchid painting into my journal in the correct spot, right after the page with the ti leaf, so using a pair of fancy-edge (scrapbooking) scissors that make a really classy torn-looking edge (check it out on the enlargement!), I cut out the orchid with about a 3/4" margin, watered down some Elmer's glue with water, used a big brush to paint the glue on the back of the painting, pressed it onto a fresh journal page from the back of the journal along with a printed-out photo of the orchid, and pressed them flat under several books for an hour or so.

Then I removed the journal page from the journal with a sharp scissor snip behind every coil in the binding. If you just tear out the page, it creates a rough edge that won't press back into the coils and stay properly ~ but if you snip it out and press it very gently into its new spot, no one will even notice it was added later, and it will stay in place. Using this method, the orchid appears in the journal across from the Botanical Garden entry as it should.

So there's your art tip for the day! I hope you enjoyed looking through it as much as I did making it. This is the sort of hands-on artwork we do in my workshops, and in fact, we'll be painting this very orchid (or one much like it) in my Nature Journaling/Sketching Workshop in Costa Rica next month. Hope you can join us ~ there are still a few openings.

My Hawaii Nature Journal ~ Day 8 ~ 12/25/2007

I purposely planned to travel on Christmas Day for two reasons. 1.) It would make the day seem less Christmassy, which was my goal (in case you're wondering about this, I really miss my siblings on Christmas, but I've decided it's insane to make the 500-mile long, icy-road trip to spend the holidays with them, so I'm trying to redirect my holiday thinking patterns). 2.) by traveling on Christmas Day, my airfare was the cheapest of any of the date combinations I tried when I bought my plane ticket online.

Leaving The Big Island was hard ~ I craned my neck to "cricking point" to get the very last glimpse as it faded to the horizon. That white area between the clouds and the vegetation is snow-capped Moana Kea.

In the Honolulu airport, the management was making a real effort to bring joy to travelers ~ most of them much less cheery about being in an airport on Christmas Day than I was. As I checked my pack for the trip home, freeing myself of luggage for a day on Oahu, we were serenaded with ukeleles and merry voices singing Joy to the World (etc.) as an airport cart filled with a load of lei-bedecked carolers wheeled slowly by.

But I was outta there! I caught a bus outside the terminal, waited a bit at a bus stop downtown, then embarked on my final outing ~ a trip around Oahu on The Bus.

Oahu's city buses travel around the island in about four hours, and the trip costs $2. If you get a transfer when you board, you can make one stop and get on a following bus for free. Pretty good deal, I'd say.

The side windows on all three buses I rode on were pretty scratched, though, so if you want to take pictures or see really clearly, it's important to sit on one of the front seats so you can see through the big front windows and out the door.

Going through Honolulu's suburbs, I spotted this funny yard decoration next to a bus stop, and the driver obligingly paused while I crouched in the doorway for 5 seconds and snapped a picture. The near snowman is made of cotton.

Sitting at the front of the bus was a terrific idea because being right next to the drivers enabled me to get acquainted, ask questions, and get more insight into island life. The drivers were in good spirits ~ they'd volunteered for the Christmas run because driving on Christmas Day pays extra and is really easy because there are few riders and fewer stops. And they didn't mind talking, volunteering all kinds of information without even being asked!

The day was off-and-on showery, but warmer outside than inside the bus. And the scenery was marvelous. The road follows the coastline, going northeast from Honolulu, looping up and around the north shore from east to west, then cutting across the southwest corner back to Honolulu.

The north shore has steep, rain-eroded mountains with windblown vegetation right next to the beach. Famous Waimea Beach, where those monster surfs you see in the X-Treme TV shows (if you watch that sort of thing) trash the surfers, was right on the bus route, so I used my tranfer there, stopping to see the big waves. Uh huh. That's it on the left. Did I miss something?

It seems that the surf ain't always up, I guess. But it didn't really matter. I had had a very interesting day, saw the outlines of Oahu, had interesting conversations with native (and proud to be) Hawai'ians, and felt supremely satisfied with the whole thing.

I even had time, after The Bus deposited me at the airport, to find a quiet spot to write in my journal, buy a fleece jacket to keep me warm, and take a short nap before catching the plane for home.
Tomorrow I will make one last entry, including the somewhat disheartening situation I found when I returned home, and what I did with one of the orchid photos I took in the Hawai'i Tropical Botanical Garden. I think it came out pretty nice.