Wednesday June 29, 2022 4:03 pm. The weather is sunny, not a cloud in the sky.
2. The 2 lines of ants that I saw last time are still walking that same path in the exact same spot, there appears to be a lot fewer of them though. I see 2 bumble bees pollinating a light purple flower. I see multiple honey bees pollinating a pink flower and a dark pink/purple flower. These flowers are right next to each other so I wonder if the bumble bees can pollinate the other flowers and if the honeybees can pollinate the light purple flowers or not. I stood observing for a while and finally a bumble bee pollinated a pink flower. I walked to the other side of the bush and saw a honeybee pollinating the light purple flowers. So they can both pollinate all the flowers. I see a lizard sunbathing on a rock, I’m only like 2 feet away from it and it hasn’t moved. It just walked out of my shadow onto a sunny part of the rock. The lizard’s head is angled so its eyes are looking at me though. It just scratched its head like a dog would, that was kinda cute. After it did that it then jumped off the rock and walked like 2 feet to a spot on the ground in the shade. Its belly is flat on the ground and its arms and legs are extended wide. That’s interesting, I wonder what it’s doing. Is it trying to remain low on the ground so predators don’t see it? Is it trying to cool down? Is it trying to make itself appear as big or as wide as possible?
3. I’ve found a species of plant that I’m not familiar with. It look pink in color, it looks like its stringy and fuzzy. It is spherical in shape and has little white dots at the end of each string. After that, in order to identify it I walked over to the section of the botanical garden that has a board with pictures of all the plants and trees in the garden. I looked for a picture of the plant I was looking at and noted the species name. It’s called a pink melaleuca and it’s scientific name is melaleuca nesophila. A fact that I thought was interesting was that this plant is called Pink Melaleuca in the US but in Australia its common name is Showy Honey Myrtle. Pink Melaleuca was first introduced into California in 1915 by the California Nursery Company in Niles, CA. (https://www.smgrowers.com/products/plants/plantdisplay.asp?plant_id=1049)
4.
Conclusion:
Something that I notice that I didn’t expect was that I was actually able to focus my attention on my sketches without getting distracted or discouraged. That’s not usually something I can do with schoolwork. It actually felt relaxing at times and even therapeutic while sketching. However, one other thing I noticed was that these sketches actually took a lot of time too and it started to get a little tedious, that was one challenge I came across on all my sketches.
One challenge when drawing the feather was there wasn’t a bench or rock nearby that I could sit on and still be close enough to see it so I had to sit down on the pathway while drawing and that was kind of difficult. I felt a little self conscious when people passed by and also had to deal with some ants crawling on me. One good thing about the feather was it was the perfect object/texture to use the different sketching techniques we learned in class to make it look as real as possible. Once I was done sketching it I noticed I felt pretty accomplished. I’ve never been a good drawer but it actually turned out pretty realistic and I was surprised.
The next thing I drew was the bee hotel, and that was more challenging because that had multiple objects and shapes and depths. I felt a bit frustrated trying to drawing the shape of the wood and the logs and the little straw things because I couldn’t get the drawing to look 3d and look quite like it does in person. I noticed I was kind of frustrated when I messed up some of the logs and had to erase it. But once I got close to finishing it and realized I’ve made a lot of progress on it I felt myself being more relaxed and in the zone.
The next thing I drew was one of the leaves on a tree. My first attempt I didn’t like the shape of the branch leaves I was initially drawing which was kind of frustrating so I had to erase those. But once I got the shape down that I liked I felt excited because it looked really similar to the actual leaf. It was challenging though because it took longer than expected and it got really tedious drawing the square/circle stem leaves over and over again. But I noticed I was able to focus on the sketch completely and felt relaxed too because I was able to get into a rhythm and I came up with a good way to shade in the leaves to make it look more realistic, which was satisfying because I liked the way it was turning out.
My last drawing was the lizard. I was kind of anxious while drawing the lizard because I knew it could move at any minute. One challenge was drawing the pattern on its back because that was kind of tedious and took longer than expected and I noticed my wrist was a bit sore for a minute after drawing all that. I noticed I felt happy too while drawing it because I really liked the outline shape of the lizard, it looked similar to the actual lizard in from of me, which was surprising because I’m never good at drawing things, especially animals. I also liked using different shading techniques to make the patterns stand out and make it look more realistic, that was fun to do.
One thing I noticed about all the drawings was that as I was getting closer to finishing them I felt very satisfied. Drawing is not one of my strong suits and I actually thought they looked somewhat realistic and was happy with how they turned out. Another thing I noticed was that I was paying close attention to the detail of the objects. Normally I just look at things at a surface level and don’t see all the little details, but sketching really makes you look closer and appreciate the objects/plants/animals more. Something I didn’t expect while sketching was how I was able to really focus on the sketching and sort of block out everything else on my mind. I realized sketching, especially outside in nature, seems to be a good anxiety and stress relief. And I really think this might be a new hobby or break for me and I will more than likely return here throughout the summer to sketch things.
Something that I want to follow up with on my next visit is to see if I can see any other lizards resting and lying flat in the shade. Usually I see them sunbathing on rocks or crawling around the pathways and being super alert when I get near, but I was able to get pretty close to this lizard.