Visualizing Ecology
Week 2 Watercolor Assignment
Due: Wednesday, Week 3

Technical Assignment:

In your sketchbook, make six small studies of individual objects you plan to use in the painting assignment listed below. In these studies, practice using different techniques we discussed in class (layered washes, wet-into-wet, build up of brush strokes, and techniques for handling edges). Label your studies to indicate which techniques you used and what you think of the results.

Expressive Assignment:

This week’s readings on evolution lend themselves to several possibilities for thematic expression. Instead of the mechanical view that a creator established a harmonious and balanced system where each species with unique characteristics and a particular nitch, the evolutionary theory proposed by Darwin sought to explain the competitive struggle he observed among the living in nature. Darwin also had to figure out what could explain extinctions of species and entire ecological systems. Your assignment is to make an image in watercolor that explores one of the following ideas.

1. Create a “Vanita”. A vanita is a still life that celebrates life’s pleasures and at the same time realizes that life is transient. Vanitas traditionally include a timepiece, skull, overripe fruits etc. You could create an updated version that celebrates what seems to be pleasurable in your life along with items that symbolize your knowledge that it can’t last.

2. In the lecture on Images and Evolution, we saw images of evolution as a ladder with the simple organism at the bottom and the more complex humans at the top. Make an image of evolution that conforms to this idea or subverts it.

3. The world that Darwin observed involved conflict, competitive struggle and extinction. Make an image that depicts this theme in nature.