Visualizing Ecology
Week 3: Watercolor Assignment
Due Week 4 (Wednesday)
Technical Assignment
Make a page of flesh tones mixing various combinations of reds and yellows. Label your mixtures. If you have a palette without named colors just name them cool yellow or warm yellow, etc.
Go to a public place. Make 10 gesture paintings of figures without sketching them first.
In preparation for your portrait, make five gesture drawings each of mouths, noses, ears, and eyes. Use washes to indicate the shading like we did in class. Be sure you draw these from life.
Expressive Assignment
This week we will explore the metaphor of “organism” to describe the relationships between plants, animals and conditions in a particular habitat. In chapter 9, Bush discusses different types of relationships between species. These relationships may or may not be mutually beneficial. For example predator-prey relationships benefit individual predators. Prey species develop defensive weapons. Species can also have symbiotic relationships. These include parasitism (the parasite benefits but harms the host), commensalisms (organisms that benefit from the host but don’t harm it) and mutualism (the relationship benefits both).
Make a self-portrait or a portrait of another person that acknowledges your/his/her personal interdependence with specific plants and animals.
For example, I might want to recognize that the oxygen I breathe comes from the campus forest. Or, I might want to express my love for my cat. Or, as a fast-food junkie, I could acknowledge that the beef I eat is raised on corn or the coffee plants are grown in the shade in South America. My cigarettes come from tobacco plants. All of these items are transported to me with oil derived from dinosaurs. I could also develop a portrait of my relationship with my roommate who is a total parasite.
You will have to focus this portrait on a few key or favorite relationships.
The size of the portrait should be at least a quarter sheet of watercolor paper. A half-sheet might be better.