Sustained Investigation #10

trash penguins

25’’x 41’’

Trash, sharpie, watercolor on watercolor paper

One of the main reasons Galapagos penguins are endangered is because of pollution. Trash washes up on the beaches of the the Galapagos and they have a tendency to eat it. I decided to have life-size Galapagos penguins surrounded by trash to really convey the message of why they're critically endangered. It's so overwhelming, but I did this purposely because these penguins and beaches are being overwhelmed with trash. In the blank patches, I added the word 'food' because like I mentioned above, they mistake trash as food. I think penguins are so interesting and it's even more interesting that this species is only found on the Galapagos Islands and it's important for people to see what's happening to these birds.

I first compiled a few images of the penguins on Acorn. Then I sketched them out with a pencil on the watercolor paper and went over it with Dr. Ph Martin's black watercolor ink. I added in a little brown as well. I tried to stress the values of the darks and lights because that is a piece of my inquiry question. I found a bunch of trash in my own garbage and also the school garbage. The round bales of hay we get for our sheep are held together by plastic netting that looks a lot like fishing net, so I cut some of that up and glued it on as well (with hot glue).

I was going to fill the entire background with trash, but then realized I would have to find a lot of little pieces to fill in the holes, so I just decided to add text in those spaces instead because I have been playing with text a lot in my work this year. If I was going to do something else, I would want to add more detail. I think that if I had gone back with a sharpie pen, I could add more detail to the face and feathers.