October 20, 2012
Drawing on Nature: Butterflies (and other insects) Under the Scope
Presentation by Wanda Booth
This event was attended by 12 people and the presenter.
TOPIC: Wanda Booth helped us learn about insect anatomy using a 40 power scope. Wanda presented a previous GNSI workshop on plant diseases at the Center for Urban Horticulture where she was Lab Lead for 19 years. She was able to obtain 5 scopes, and so we all had plenty of time to examine and draw our specimens.
Wanda has been volunteering her 20 year expertise as a Plant Diagnostician with the Master Gardener Program to the public, generously sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm for the tiny world that largely goes unnoticed.
SPECIMENS:
Wanda brought three trays of insect specimens from the Master Gardener Program, and several fresh and life specimens too. Participants brought collections of butterflies and beautiful and tropical beetles, some of a most impressive size, along with a nice variety of our local insects. For those who would like to collect insects http://tropicalbutterflies.com is a good resource as is the Bug Safari in Seattle.
Sylvia was the Hospitality chair for this event. She brought a lovely variety of cheeses, crackers and fruit, and her homemade zucchini bread and cookies were wonderful! Thank you Sylvia!
This workshop was held in the private studio of Sheila Theodoratos. Sheila presented a color pencil workshop for our group at MOHAI a few years ago. She is an excellent color pencil artist and instructor. The studio is set up in a wonderfully organized way, with windows on two walls and plenty of daylight.
Workshop Review by Sylvia Portillo
I wish every GNSI and PNBA member could have attended Wanda Booth’s October 20th, 2012, lecture on insects and bugs. Those who were able to reserve a seat fit nicely into the teaching studio of Sheila Theodoratos, located in Shoreline.
Wanda’s love of insects was infectious and we were full of questions. She provided hand-outs and explained her printed information describing the phylum Arthropoda. It is made up of invertebrates: they have jointed legs, an exoskeleton and their bodies are divided into segments. Some of them have elytra, the hard covering over wings (lady bugs). The phylum is mostly made up of insects. Insects are distinguished from the remaining members of the phylum by their number of legs—insects have six. We also learned about the different wing configurations—insects have one or two pair which either lay flat along their back (fly) or stick out (dragonfly). Their feeding methods are piercing/sucking (mosquito), sponging/lapping (fly) or biting (have mandibles such as grasshoppers and ants).
Wanda generously provided dissecting microscopes made by Bausch and Lomb so we could view our specimens in 20 to 40 times magnification and then draw them. She also brought one inexpensive scope that had 10 – 15 times magnification; it cost around $60.00 and we were very impressed at its usefulness.
Wanda provided a list of three things to look for should any of us want to purchase a dissecting microscope:
It should be bi-focal
It should have a light in the upper part of the scope
It should be a compound (binocular) scope which is the more powerful scope
Good places to find used lower costing scopes are Craig’s List and the UW Surplus Store.
We learned that a butterfly’s body is made up of three parts: located in the head is the brain, a butterfly has a circulatory system which includes a heart, located in the thorax. All legs and wings extend from the thorax. They do breathing/moisture release through small openings along their abdomen called spiracle. Reproductive parts are housed in the abdomen.
Finally, Wanda shared some very beautiful and informative books about bugs and insects plus named a good insect instructor:
- How to Know the Insects by Roger G. Bland and H.E. Jaques, ISBN: 0-697-04752-0 (paper) or
0-697-04753-9 (cloth)
- The Introduction to the Study of Insects by Borror, Triplehorn, and Johnson, ISBN: 0-030025397-7
- Instructor: Sharon Coleman, cristensen4(at)wsu.edu, Bugs 101 and 102
The workshop ended with participants walking around sharing drawings and looking at each other’s specimens at up to 40 times magnification. Wow!
Events 2012
GNSI Northwest Board Meeting 11/05/2012
We had a board meeting on November 4, 2012 attended by Lisa Valore, Marilyn Droege and Sylvia Portillo. We discussed possible submittals for the next newsletter. We discussed the election procedure and decided to have a two week nomination period to finalize the ballot. The final ballots with all nominations will be sent to current members via email, and there will be a two week period for responses. The nomination information is a variation of one from 1991. Our Secretary Jeanne Boyd will collect and count the votes and announce the results. We will install the new board and other positions at the January (now February) meeting. We discussed seeking a voting application similar to "Doodle", a meeting application. It is possible to nominate others, but a good idea to contact them to be sure they want to be nominated. Marilyn decided not to be added to the nomination form as VP, but will continue to secure library locations and other tasks she has faithfully performed for the group. Marilyn suggested a new position to add to the nomination form: Public Relations.
We thought it would be best to have a free or inexpensive workshop at the next meeting. Lisa has been discussing a bird drawing or background painting workshop with Linda Feltner. That can happen, but at a later date in the year.
The IRS did not respond to the request for our By Laws, and we are faced with rewriting them, keeping in mind we are a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization, in this case a group formed to further the efforts of natural science illustraton businesses. We can form a committee for this effort.
We discussed several points concerning the joint exhibit in 2014:
- It's probably a good time to have a second planning meeting, to solidify the tasks and timelines of individual committees.
- We discussed the qualifications for a third juror for the selection committee, and tossed some names around.
- We discussed the use of a jurying evaluation form with color, composition, media, and using a scale of 1 to 3 or 1 to five to tally the votes of the submitted works.
- It would be nice to have a "juror walk through" event after the show is hung.
- The age of accepted work can be discussed and decided at the next exhibition meeting.
- The website needs a separate page for this event. The framing guidelines have been written, and can be posted on the page. The blog will be for topics under consideration, and the web page will be for items and decisions that are final.
August 22, 2012
Tea Party, Visit with Pat Babcock
Pat was our Exhibits Coordinator for many years. Armed with our "GNSI Book" containing art samples of the group's work, she contacted many museums and galleries in the Puget Sound, arranging shows for our members. Her drive and devotion to promote our group's presence in the northwest region's art world is inpressive. Pat now lives at the other corner of the country. 6 present and former members of GNSI Northwest had a lovely time visiting and chatting on a large variety of topics, from spiders and other visiting wildlife to current and past days of this organization.
June 16, 2012
How to Draw Baskets, Workshop with Margaret Davidson
Workshop Review:
A basket — an everyday object, which represents an ancient and worldwide technology. Margaret Davidson's enthusiasm for a basket, and respect for its maker, is both touching and inspiring. The participants of Saturday's workshop will never look at a basket in quite the same way again.
15 people gathered at the Green Lake Library June 16, 2012 to learn how to draw a basket. Many brought baskets along, ranging from a small twined spruce two-color necklace, to one shaped like a fish made from cattail stalks or bulrushes.
Many very interesting baskets were displayed, and it was fascinating to see Margaret identify the structures of the baskets, the location they are from, and the names of tribes of the makers. Her baskets are made from many materials, some very large such as Scandinavian plaited wood veneer market basket, some very tiny. And the materials are delightful in name too, bear grass from the mountains, sweet grass from the coast, spruce and cedar, bark and root.
In the next ‟show and tell” part of the workshop, we learned the proper way to hold a basket, with both hands, not by the fragile rim. Margaret pointed out the characteristics and interesting details of each basket. Jeanne has a Tahono O'odham, basket, coiled and sewn, each stitch splitting the one before. Susan also has a coiled basket, but from a very different location, hers is a gift from South Africa. Marilyn brought a footed African plaited basket. (Basketmaker Alert: Marilyn has alder root, and is willing to part with it.) Suzanne's item was a very old basket made from Devil's Claw and yucca, also from the Southwest.
After viewing and discussing many of the baskets to become familiar with the terminology, such as active and passive structures and the three methods of constructing woven baskets, we were ready for Part 2 of the workshop: Measure and Draw.
Margaret's professional beginnings are intertwined with basketry from her early days at the Burke Museum, where she worked for 10 years. Very early on she was inspired first to observe, and then to draw baskets. Over time this grew to the development of her basket drawing method, which involves counting, measuring and plotting horizontal structures, vertical structures, and the careful placement and rendering of every stitch, producing an extremely accurate representation that can look as real as the object. First one must make decisions on the usage of the final illustration and importantly, take into account the audience of the piece, as basket makers are very interested in certain views and aspects of the basket, including construction details which Margaret sees as valuable insights into the mind of the weaver.
We didn't have much time for lunch, as we gathered in groups to hear details of other items Margaret brought to share. There were actual illustrations in several media; color pencil and watercolor, color pencil on brown line, and graphite. There were three lovely posters with basket illustrations Margaret had illustrated and designed. Margaret was able to share her 2011 National Conference topic with us at this point in her presentation. Her fascinating account is of a poster illustration she made from during a very intense week, of a very fragile 5000-year-old fragment found in the bank of the Thorne River, located northwest of Ketchikan, on Prince of Wales Island. You may see this poster online, click to slide 11 on this site: http://www.slideshare.net/alyr3/basketry-of-the-tlingit-and-haida. Also on display were many good basketry books including Otis Tufton Mason's American Indian Basketry, Basketry Technology, a Guide to Identification and Analysis by J. M. Adovasio. Margaret executed the artwork for a book and accompanying poster titled Crow's Shells, Artistic Basketry of Puget Sound by Nile Thompson and Carolyn Marr. Her illustrations of basket structures are shaded dimensionally, not schematically as in most basketry books, and are not only visually clear and understandable, but also very beautiful renderings in themselves. — Lisa Valore
Workshop Description:
The art of basketry exists everywhere, and goes back thousands of years. It is something that almost every society has developed, using a huge variety of materials. But curiously, there are only three basic basket weaving structures: plaiting, twining, and coiling. There are only three basic structures, but there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of variations. That is the joy of basketry.
Drawing basketry is another joy, as it lets you discover something about the mind and the hands of the weaver. Different groups developed their own traditions, which show in the shapes and colors of their baskets, and different weavers sometimes inserted unique features, like a specific pattern or even a specific mistake, that have come down to us as signatures.
In this workshop we will study these three structures, and map them out to draw them. I’ll bring in several baskets to work from, and anyone is welcome to bring in others to explore and draw.
Supplies are simple: 2B pencil, smooth paper like plate Bristol or another smooth drawing paper, a kneaded eraser, and a ruler of some kind.
Drawing the Thorne River Basket, one of Alaska's Oldest and Most Stunning Archaeological Finds
“One day in the 1994 off-duty geologist and sometimes archaeologist Dave Putnam was walking along the Thorne River in Alaska, when he spotted something odd. The tide was low, so part of the riverbank was visible that was usually underwater, and there, barely showing, was a sort of textured fringe sticking out of the mud. This caught his eye, and turned out to be the remains of an ancient basket, anaerobically preserved in the mud for over 5,000 years."
Margaret presented a slide talk about one intensive week spent in Alaska "drawing this amazing and fragile artifact, and about the very tiny but wonderful subset of archaeological illustration that is the study and drawing of basketry.”
Margaret Davidson has a BFA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from the University of Washington. She is both an artist and illustrator, and also teaches courses in Beginning Drawing, Sources of Modernism in Drawing, Aesthetics of Drawing, and various drawing technique classes at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, Washington.
In scientific illustration Davidson concentrated on archaeological and anthropological subject matter, drawing lithics, pottery, and especially basketry and textiles. To this end she has illustrated various books and journal articles, such as Spruce Root Basketry of the Haida and Tlingit by Sharon Busby (2003 Marquand Books and the University of Washington Press) and The Archaeology of the Yakutat Foreland: a Socioecological View, Volumes I and II, by Stanley Drew Davis (1996).
She is the author of Contemporary Drawing: Key Concepts and Techniques, published in 2011 by Watson-Guptill, a division of Random House, New York.
Her focus in her own drawings is in the subtle and reciprocal relationship between the mark and the surface, along with various related dichotomies such as figure and ground, form and space, and illusion and reality.
She is represented by Anchor Art Space in Anacortes, Washington.
We had a board meeting on November 4, 2012 attended by Lisa Valore, Marilyn Droege and Sylvia Portillo. We discussed possible submittals for the next newsletter. We discussed the election procedure and decided to have a two week nomination period to finalize the ballot. The final ballots with all nominations will be sent to current members via email, and there will be a two week period for responses. The nomination information is a variation of one from 1991. Our Secretary Jeanne Boyd will collect and count the votes and announce the results. We will install the new board and other positions at the January (now February) meeting. We discussed seeking a voting application similar to "Doodle", a meeting application. It is possible to nominate others, but a good idea to contact them to be sure they want to be nominated. Marilyn decided not to be added to the nomination form as VP, but will continue to secure library locations and other tasks she has faithfully performed for the group. Marilyn suggested a new position to add to the nomination form: Public Relations.
We thought it would be best to have a free or inexpensive workshop at the next meeting. Lisa has been discussing a bird drawing or background painting workshop with Linda Feltner. That can happen, but at a later date in the year.
The IRS did not respond to the request for our By Laws, and we are faced with rewriting them, keeping in mind we are a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization, in this case a group formed to further the efforts of natural science illustraton businesses. We can form a committee for this effort.
We discussed several points concerning the joint exhibit in 2014:
- It's probably a good time to have a second planning meeting, to solidify the tasks and timelines of individual committees.
- We discussed the qualifications for a third juror for the selection committee, and tossed some names around.
- We discussed the use of a jurying evaluation form with color, composition, media, and using a scale of 1 to 3 or 1 to five to tally the votes of the submitted works.
- It would be nice to have a "juror walk through" event after the show is hung.
- The age of accepted work can be discussed and decided at the next exhibition meeting.
- The website needs a separate page for this event. The framing guidelines have been written, and can be posted on the page. The blog will be for topics under consideration, and the web page will be for items and decisions that are final.
August 22, 2012
Tea Party, Visit with Pat Babcock
Pat was our Exhibits Coordinator for many years. Armed with our "GNSI Book" containing art samples of the group's work, she contacted many museums and galleries in the Puget Sound, arranging shows for our members. Her drive and devotion to promote our group's presence in the northwest region's art world is inpressive. Pat now lives at the other corner of the country. 6 present and former members of GNSI Northwest had a lovely time visiting and chatting on a large variety of topics, from spiders and other visiting wildlife to current and past days of this organization.
June 16, 2012
How to Draw Baskets, Workshop with Margaret Davidson
Workshop Review:
A basket — an everyday object, which represents an ancient and worldwide technology. Margaret Davidson's enthusiasm for a basket, and respect for its maker, is both touching and inspiring. The participants of Saturday's workshop will never look at a basket in quite the same way again.
15 people gathered at the Green Lake Library June 16, 2012 to learn how to draw a basket. Many brought baskets along, ranging from a small twined spruce two-color necklace, to one shaped like a fish made from cattail stalks or bulrushes.
Many very interesting baskets were displayed, and it was fascinating to see Margaret identify the structures of the baskets, the location they are from, and the names of tribes of the makers. Her baskets are made from many materials, some very large such as Scandinavian plaited wood veneer market basket, some very tiny. And the materials are delightful in name too, bear grass from the mountains, sweet grass from the coast, spruce and cedar, bark and root.
In the next ‟show and tell” part of the workshop, we learned the proper way to hold a basket, with both hands, not by the fragile rim. Margaret pointed out the characteristics and interesting details of each basket. Jeanne has a Tahono O'odham, basket, coiled and sewn, each stitch splitting the one before. Susan also has a coiled basket, but from a very different location, hers is a gift from South Africa. Marilyn brought a footed African plaited basket. (Basketmaker Alert: Marilyn has alder root, and is willing to part with it.) Suzanne's item was a very old basket made from Devil's Claw and yucca, also from the Southwest.
After viewing and discussing many of the baskets to become familiar with the terminology, such as active and passive structures and the three methods of constructing woven baskets, we were ready for Part 2 of the workshop: Measure and Draw.
Margaret's professional beginnings are intertwined with basketry from her early days at the Burke Museum, where she worked for 10 years. Very early on she was inspired first to observe, and then to draw baskets. Over time this grew to the development of her basket drawing method, which involves counting, measuring and plotting horizontal structures, vertical structures, and the careful placement and rendering of every stitch, producing an extremely accurate representation that can look as real as the object. First one must make decisions on the usage of the final illustration and importantly, take into account the audience of the piece, as basket makers are very interested in certain views and aspects of the basket, including construction details which Margaret sees as valuable insights into the mind of the weaver.
We didn't have much time for lunch, as we gathered in groups to hear details of other items Margaret brought to share. There were actual illustrations in several media; color pencil and watercolor, color pencil on brown line, and graphite. There were three lovely posters with basket illustrations Margaret had illustrated and designed. Margaret was able to share her 2011 National Conference topic with us at this point in her presentation. Her fascinating account is of a poster illustration she made from during a very intense week, of a very fragile 5000-year-old fragment found in the bank of the Thorne River, located northwest of Ketchikan, on Prince of Wales Island. You may see this poster online, click to slide 11 on this site: http://www.slideshare.net/alyr3/basketry-of-the-tlingit-and-haida. Also on display were many good basketry books including Otis Tufton Mason's American Indian Basketry, Basketry Technology, a Guide to Identification and Analysis by J. M. Adovasio. Margaret executed the artwork for a book and accompanying poster titled Crow's Shells, Artistic Basketry of Puget Sound by Nile Thompson and Carolyn Marr. Her illustrations of basket structures are shaded dimensionally, not schematically as in most basketry books, and are not only visually clear and understandable, but also very beautiful renderings in themselves. — Lisa Valore
Workshop Description:
The art of basketry exists everywhere, and goes back thousands of years. It is something that almost every society has developed, using a huge variety of materials. But curiously, there are only three basic basket weaving structures: plaiting, twining, and coiling. There are only three basic structures, but there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of variations. That is the joy of basketry.
Drawing basketry is another joy, as it lets you discover something about the mind and the hands of the weaver. Different groups developed their own traditions, which show in the shapes and colors of their baskets, and different weavers sometimes inserted unique features, like a specific pattern or even a specific mistake, that have come down to us as signatures.
In this workshop we will study these three structures, and map them out to draw them. I’ll bring in several baskets to work from, and anyone is welcome to bring in others to explore and draw.
Supplies are simple: 2B pencil, smooth paper like plate Bristol or another smooth drawing paper, a kneaded eraser, and a ruler of some kind.
Drawing the Thorne River Basket, one of Alaska's Oldest and Most Stunning Archaeological Finds
“One day in the 1994 off-duty geologist and sometimes archaeologist Dave Putnam was walking along the Thorne River in Alaska, when he spotted something odd. The tide was low, so part of the riverbank was visible that was usually underwater, and there, barely showing, was a sort of textured fringe sticking out of the mud. This caught his eye, and turned out to be the remains of an ancient basket, anaerobically preserved in the mud for over 5,000 years."
Margaret presented a slide talk about one intensive week spent in Alaska "drawing this amazing and fragile artifact, and about the very tiny but wonderful subset of archaeological illustration that is the study and drawing of basketry.”
Margaret Davidson has a BFA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from the University of Washington. She is both an artist and illustrator, and also teaches courses in Beginning Drawing, Sources of Modernism in Drawing, Aesthetics of Drawing, and various drawing technique classes at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, Washington.
In scientific illustration Davidson concentrated on archaeological and anthropological subject matter, drawing lithics, pottery, and especially basketry and textiles. To this end she has illustrated various books and journal articles, such as Spruce Root Basketry of the Haida and Tlingit by Sharon Busby (2003 Marquand Books and the University of Washington Press) and The Archaeology of the Yakutat Foreland: a Socioecological View, Volumes I and II, by Stanley Drew Davis (1996).
She is the author of Contemporary Drawing: Key Concepts and Techniques, published in 2011 by Watson-Guptill, a division of Random House, New York.
Her focus in her own drawings is in the subtle and reciprocal relationship between the mark and the surface, along with various related dichotomies such as figure and ground, form and space, and illusion and reality.
She is represented by Anchor Art Space in Anacortes, Washington.