Friday, August 30, 2013

My 5th Glacier Field Season

Beautiful lil paradise! Bright green moss on the rock face covered with yellow and pink monkey flower 




















This summer was my 5th field season working with the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project, and my second summer taking my own measurements of crevasses in order to observe their changes in accordance with the retreat of the glaciers.

Here are some photos of this field season! Next post I will show my field sketches from this summer!

A got a grant through the Center of Undergraduate Research at UMaine, and used it to buy a laser rangefinder (to shoot distance, height, inclination), the cam-line I am using here (intended to measure well depths, a steel cable with markers every foot for measurement. I used it to measure crevasse depths!!), and most of my plane ticket out here.
Watercolor near the terminus of the Lower Curtis glacier on Mt.Shuksan
Trudging back to camp after a long day of working on the crevasse-ridden Rainbow glacier (behind me)
Hike out of one spot - hike into another!
Descending the blue ice near the terminus of Easton glacier on Mt. Baker
Watercolor and colored pencil sketch of this pool at the terminus of the Iceworm glacier.
Mountain goats - I have a neat post about them coming up! These guys are very elusive, you can't get near them usually.
Ben using a rope to measure the depth of the snow accumulation from the past winter (crevasse stratigraphy - like tree rings!)
Checking out a lil water-filled crevasse on lower Rainbow glacier
Partway through a sketch of camp below Easton glacier
Working on Easton glacier

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Toned paper



I really enjoy working on toned paper; it is nice to not have white as a base, because then it can be used as a strong highlight. The portrait above is just a sketch I did this past semester while at art club. Little stars surround her and she begins to become one with the sky


Monday, July 1, 2013

Stormy character



I have been devoting time each day to work on something, only about 4-6 hours, sometimes more when there is a project I really want to get done. Whether it is a sketch, a submission for DesignCrowd, a blog post, or reading about glaciers for my research project, or planning out the thesis project I will need to complete before I graduate from UMaine.

I think it is important to take advantage of time I have during this summer, and still enjoy it of course!

This character is done on a nice grey toned paper. After a pencil sketch I inked her with fine tip pens and then used a black colored pencil  to shade her face and used the wonderful tool sharpie paint extra fine point white pen to add the highlights. 



She is meant to look fierce and stormy


I like the character just in grey-tone so I photographed her at this stage before adding purple hair



A different version from photoshop, as is the figure at the top with mermaid sea-green hair





Saturday, June 29, 2013

Longboard


Most days I longboard to get around the UMaine campus. This summer I decided to decorate the bottom with markers, pen, and acrylic paint. Before doing this, I sanded the surface, and then afterwards put a clear finish back over. 













Friday, June 28, 2013

Portfolio

Character illustrations

This summer I have been working on my portfolio: organizing it, presenting it,  and adding to it. I decided to create an account on Carbonmade: http://jillpeltoart.carbonmade.com/ and I have also been creating submissions for the contest website DesignCrowd.


Pirate in pen and watercolor

One of my birthday presents for Jackson. A watercolor and pen illustration of us and the many adventures we have.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Summertime!

Soccer at Jackson's

Painted turtles

Odiorne Point State Park

Sculpture in Cambridge

Red eft at Mt. Monadnock 

Pretty moth in Naples, ME

My brother, Ben, swimming 1/2 mile across Long Lake for triathlon training while we escort

Huge beautiful luna moth in Maine

A baby bunny outside my house

Watching the Joy Formidable in Providence, one of my favorite bands.

The Airborne Toxic Even in Providence

Boston for the day with Jackson for his 21st birthday

Jackson bought me tickets to see The Joy Formidable in Boston for my birthday, but the concert was April 19th, the day of the lockdown, so it was rescheduled to June 20.. Which means I saw this band two nights in a row, the night before as a backup in Providence to Airborne. She is great live!




Relief Printing multi-color


The second linoleum relief print we made was done multi-colored in what is called the "suicide" style because you cannot fix a mistake (un-carve something) in the very particular process. In order to make sure we understood how to go about this our professor had us sketch each color layer on a sheet of tracing paper.

These are some prep sketches of for my idea. The theme of this assignment was ephemeral, so I was thinking about the way we consider time. We often consider rock as permanent, while in reality it weathers and crumbles, as did the Old Man of the Mountain. 
It all depends on the timeline being considered, there is no one way to define a short or long amount of time; So, I compared the life of a human compared to the lifespan of a cliff.


I made 8 prints trying out different color combinations. Each color is one layer of linoleum that I carved away after printing.


 
We had the option of waxing some of our prints if we chose, after the ink completely dries. 






This print is my favorite

I tried printing the purple shadows and green trees before the blue background was dry enough (it takes closer to 2 days to try between ink layers) so the ink of the sky lifted up a bit.