3/25/21

 I'm making progress on the big drawings and I am hoping to have them done by next Tuesday, though we will see how far I get. The first one took me around 10 hours, maybe more. I think I am going to paint the wall behind it green, since there is no color in the piece itself, so I have a handful of paint cards that I am considering. 

Right now I'm leaning towards the darker of the one on the left. I may do something more on the wall behind it but I am going to focus on finishing the panels first.

As for the laser-cut project, I did go look for old boxes but I couldn't find anything reasonable that I liked so I think I am going to use shadowbox-type frames instead. I also think I might layer glass in-between each panel. I should be able to get at least 12 glass frames in each box with the ones I have been looking at. The final size for each of the three parts is going to be 8"x8". With the glass layering I may also be able to play with a bit of color painted on the glass itself.

I liked the idea of reversing the science papers and cutting them out so that the words are on the back, then finding a way to install a light in the back of the frame.

For a third wall, likely the one with the door on it, I want to do a series of small drawings of each plant. Each plant will have a set of three of these: one quick sketch with my notes, one more extensive sketch, and one small painting. This might be where the idea of using specimen pins could come in cause that could also help with varying the display cause by the end I will have 24 small drawings to place.

I likely will do something similar with the birds, though they may have a few more parts to them just cause I find them more interesting. This will depend on time, though.

The last wall is the one that I haven't fully decided what to do with yet. I know I definitely want to do something with scientific papers so I have been working on collecting ones on this system and particularly on extinctions. I think this one could be interesting to go back to the idea of cutting out extinct species and playing with silhouettes but I think there needs to be more to it than just that. I could make the other birds out of the scraps but I'm not sure how sold I am on that idea.