Mushroom Festival Poster!

Oh my goodness, October is whooshing by so fast. I should probably post how the Mushroom Festival poster turned out, since they are now peppered all over the Eugene and Springfield areas in anticipation of the grand event!

My previous post talked about how I was experimenting with the composition. Having nailed that down, I went into make-it-so-mode. I started off with a fast loose sketch to serve as guidelines...

 Then started settling in on the colors that would go into each area (again, fast and loose).

At this point, I realized that my birds were out of whack! I was so fascinated with the strange morphology and brilliant coloration of the turkey heads that they had become too big for their bodies. It's nice to be able to catch these things before a lot of final detail goes into place. So I went back to my reference photos and started getting serious about those turkey details.

Ah yes. Big birds with tiny pin-heads. Now we are talking.

Now that the pesky heads were figured out, started tackling the turkey-tail mushrooms themselves. The fungi are the stars of the show, after all!

And here we have the final shiny rendering.

Which was then popped into the final event poster! (You can see a nice big version of it on the Mount Pisgah Arboretum website.) Fun!

The Big Float

A couple weeks ago I participated in "The Big Float," an event where more than a thousand people cross the Willamette River in downtown Portland on inner tubes and other silly floaty things. * Hace un par de semanas, yo participé en un evento llamado “The Big Float.” Más de mil personas cruzaban el río Willamette en el centro de Portland, usando cámaras de rueda y otras cosas absurdos que flotan.

I packed my waterproof sketchbook so I could draw people in their fun costumes before I splashed across the river myself. The waterproof paper held up beautifully to being soaked. I just wish I'd been able to capture the colors of the pool toys and the life vests! * Llevaba mi libro de dibujar hidrófugo para poder dibujar las disfraces de la gente antes de cruzar el río en mi cámara. El papel especial sobrevivió la adventura mojada perfectamente bien. La única cosa triste es que no capturé los colores vivos de todos los jugetes de piscina.


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