Back to Black

While I have done some color pieces for work, it's all been concept for projects that aren't public yet, so here's a few more ink spots that I've done lately. On the homefront, I am working on a couple of pieces, but they are still WIP.

Here's a whitespotted bamboo shark:


A porcupinefish, no species in particular but the markings were modeled after a Diodon holocanthus:


A male American Kestrel:


A Harris's Hawk; I feel like the head's too big:


And while not strictly black and white, it is fairly monochromatic. Here's an octopus done in Adobe Illustrator in the style of Live Trace for a volunteer name tags board:


Working on a Crested Caracara pen and ink drawing now. Otherwise, mostly working on new signage.

Mural Madness!

Finally getting around to posting pictures of the murals I worked on this year.
The murals are © to Aquarium of the Pacific, but the photos are © to me.
Here's an overview of the Watershed Exhibit mural:

You can see that the mugwort's starting to overgrow the right side of the mural.
These days it's 6 ft tall and completely covers the bottom half of the mural.

Here's a shot of the left side of the mural:


The middle of the mural:


Several close-ups of some of the animals:
Great Blue Heron


Harvest Mouse


Black-Neck Stilt




Here are some photos from the Shark Zone murals on Harbor Terrace. While the watershed mural was painstakingly scientifically accurate, Shark Zone was done to brighten up the area. While the colors are truly that bright on some of the different species, I punched up some colors and shifted others. The mural is also a mix of tropical and temperate species.
The main part of the wall mural on the left wall:

The other side, on the right wall:

The two computer murals printed out as stickers. The one on the food cart is a combination of a watercolor whale shark with some Photoshop filters and a lot of copy-paste fish. That one had a short deadline and was done in a day. The one on the window is a Photoshop creation based on a rough pencil sketch. All the corals are put in there more for aesthetics than for the actual zone and place they grow in:

Here's the actual computer image of the window image, "Harbor Reef."


Some close-ups of the wall mural:
bat ray


bluespotted ray


Anemone! Based off a whitespotted rose anemone.



Hope you enjoyed your tour of the recent murals I worked on. I finally have them up!

From Concept to Completion

Here's a small insight into the process of creating a scientifically accurate mural.

Near the end of last year, I was tagged to create a mural for the 42' white wall in our new watershed exhibit. My approach to murals is through the limited experience and experimentation that I've had working at the aquarium and the years of painting on a smaller scale, so my approach is very much my own. I started off the image in Photoshop for the quickness and ease of changing placement.

My first instructions were to copy the mural that was done on the fountain in the front, so I after a couple of revisions of bird placement and how much of the mural to copy, this is the mockup I made:


The thought was that the image didn't really do what they wanted to do, which was, essentially, to cover the white wall and in effect, make it disappear. So the bosses scrapped the idea of copying the fountain from the front, because the shape of it was completely wrong for the wall in the back and it would have taken some major distortion and extension to work with the dimensions of the wall. Instead, I was given free reign to create my own image, a sort of "do whatever you want" with a similar idea. So I decided to put some of the garden plants on the wall to create the illusion of an extended garden and since it's an aquarium, an ocean scene. I also carried over from the fountain mural the locally found endangered bird, the Least Tern, as the main focus of the mural and few native butterflies to round out the animal population:


Once given an image to work from, my bosses decided on the theme "Urban Wetland," to reflect the characteristics of the local wetlands and the interactions of people with the natural world. It's a large part of what the aquarium wants to convey through the new watershed exhibit, which this mural is a part of. So another couple of revisions deciding what should compose the "urban" portion and this was the result:


So we had power lines, cars, and a shopping mall to represent the urban part of urban wetlands. The next request was to see a 20% tilt in the "camera angle" of the image in order to see more of the wetland:


For the sake of scientific accuracy, since this was no longer an ocean scene but a coastal bluff overlooking a wetland, the brushy hill was converted to a sand dune, a prime nesting spot for the Least Tern. Also, an additional revision called for the inclusion of an osprey, a common bird of prey, hunting for fish in the wetlands:


Now, I had a full collection of local residents of the wetlands, mostly birds, because they are the most easily seen and recognized. The image was sent off again for review, this time including a professor that was familiar with the local Los Cerritos Wetlands. The species list was updated to include more of the local plants and animals.

The final concept image can be found in the previous post.

Next post: Photos from the actual finished mural.

Instead of Wallpaper

A while ago I posted a couple of images I did for a mural of the Sea of Cortez, the Vaquita and the totoaba. I finally got around to taking a photo of the mural. Here's the main section. It's about about 12' wide and 9' tall. There's another portion on the opposite wall where the Baja peninsula is blown up, but the lighting is pretty bad in that gallery.

Currently working on another mural, larger than the last, at 42' x 8' though the wall dips down to 5' for about 20' of it, so that's why the mockup has a strange shape. I will post more about the process as this mural goes along.

Respectfully Dead, Happily Living

A few weeks ago I went to Artist's Night at the Body Worlds III exhibit, live models posing next to the plastinated bodies. It's taken me a while, but I'm finally putting up the sketches I did. Now, bear with me here, most of these are pretty rough, and I can't say I'm happy with some of them, but I was glad to have the opportunity to work out my rusty figure drawing skills. Many of the people that went sketching that night had skills that I envied. So, onto the sketches. I find that I really only like the first one, and that my skills were kind of sporadic after that. Forgive the quality of the reproductions. I took the photos hastily in the evening. WARNING: Artistic Nudes ahead.

Spreading the Ink

Tried out some pen techniques at work with a few duck and other recent illustrations. I realized I don't really have a good brush for inking; at least it worked for the large patches I had to cover. So, the duck foot was done in the precise, careful inking I normally do, same with the buffalo sculpin. The generic duck was done partially with a brush, and the duck head was done with some looser, more varied strokes. The desert tortoise was a slower process with more detail, but I fiddle with stroke variation on the shell.

Holding onto the Edge

A couple of Gulf of California's critically endangered residents, the vaquita whale and the totoaba fish--both are about the same size at about 6 ft. Overfishing of the totoaba using gillnets have decreased both populations to the point of near extinction. The decreased flow of water from the Colorado River hasn't helped either. Current conservation efforts include the creation of a nature preserve between the Colorado River delta and the upper portion of the Gulf of California.
Originals are 11X14 done in pen and ink for work.

Slither and Slink

Some eels for your viewing pleasure. Eels can be more beautiful, with more complex patterns than you'd think, especially since most people jump to the California moray eel or perhaps the eels in The Little Mermaid when thinking about what eels might look like. They are certainly more diverse in form and pattern than I'd ever thought before seeing so many different species. All in black and white with pen and ink of the species that can be found at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

A Few Sharks

So these are some of the watercolor spot paintings I've been doing at work lately for ID signage. For some reason the "save for web" option in Photoshop always makes the images darker. I understand the more limited color palette, but I'm not quite sure why the colors would be darker overall.
As they are:
sandtiger shark Carcharias taurus
blacktip reef shark Carcharius melanopterus
nurse shark Ginglymostoma cirratum

The Simplicity of Black and White

Been working on images for the volunteer information cards at work. I've forgotten how quick and simple black and white can be, plus I really like working with the ol' croquil and ink bottle. Some microns tossed in as well for the stippling. It's a fairly pleasant way to fill the hours. Besides, I can eliminate any major ink smudges with the erase function in PS. Here are just a few of the images.

Dead things don't move as much

K and I went to the World Museum of Natural History in Riverside this past weekend. Unlike drawing from life, all the animals there kindly sat in the same position for hours on end (not that I have a thing against sketching from life; this was just a different take on things). K is a much faster artist and therefore got a ton done, in the two hours we spent there.

On the other hand, I concentrated on one kingfisher specimen with some beautifully colored plumage. As far as I can tell, it's a White-throated Kingfisher, Halcyon smyrnensis from Asia, but since that's only a guess from googling, I can't tell you for sure. Not many of the animals there had labels, and I don't have a bird guide to Asia. Some well done taxidermied animals there. Will have to revisit. Some minor post work done afterwards.
Colors changed from the scan.

Work-art

A rendering of a 4 year grant project from work, started by my old coworker
and rerendered with his initial thoughts by me.
So, actual size is 4' x 2', made in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
Includes elements of scanned sketches, actual photos, and token Sketchup models.
Right, so my workplace owns this one.
I might post a detail at a later point.