Project Abstract
For my honors project, I want to create a mural featuring different animal species that are endangered within the San Diego area. I will begin my project by researching endangered San Diegan species, and what conservation efforts, if any, are being made to help preserve them. If possible, I will take photos of these animals and use them as a reference when painting. My final product will be a mural hung in HTHI that includes paintings of each species, along with the number of animals remaining in the species and information on how to help save these species from extinction.
Week One
Before I start to paint, I need to complete four tasks: obtaining permission from the school to paint my mural, researching endangered animals in San Diego, planning out the physical appearance of my mural, and gathering materials to paint.
Task 1 / Permission:
I reached out to multiple teachers about potential mural locations, and received permission from Dr. Sarah to paint on the wall near her classroom. I also discussed painting directly onto the wall with Karen Lowe, and she agreed to let me paint directly onto the wall as long as I showed her sketches beforehand to make sure that the content fit in with our school culture, and that the mural was executed properly.
Task 2 / Research:
Before beginning my research, I narrowed down my list of animals to only include ocean animals living in San Diego. I did some preliminary research into endangered ocean animals living in San Diego, and learned that the Vaquita, Green Sea Turtle, Light-Footed Ridgeway Rail and Garibaldi fish are all endangered species undergoing conservation in San Diego. I also spoke with workers at the San Diego Living Coast Discovery Center about their conservation efforts, and learned that they mainly focus on maintaining marshland ecosystems. The primary animal that the San Diego Living Coast Discovery Center focuses on is the Light-Footed Ridgeway Rail, a species of bird living in San Diego marshes. While I enjoyed learning about the Rail, I would like my piece to focus more on oceanic conservation, and have elected to cross this animal off my list. My next step will be reaching out to San Diego conservation organizations with more in-depth questions about each of the species i’ve researched, and narrowing down a species for my mural.
Task 3 / Planning:
I photographed the area of HTHI where I plan to paint my mural, and have sketched a potential concepts on paper and as a digital trace over a photo. Photos of the sketches are included below. For my mural, I want to paint the bay by HTHI, as it’s a recognizable location and I feel as though it will drive home to our students that animals are becoming endangered just a few short blocks away from our high school. In addition, I want to include QR codes by each species I paint with conservation information about each species, or a link to donate to organizations that help protect these animals.
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Task 4 / Supplies:
For my mural, I'll need brushes of multiple sizes, and a lot of paint. While I have brushes at home that will be serviceable, I will need to obtain paint in order to complete this mural. I checked in with Jeremy about using his paint, but he will not be able to provide the amount of materials I will need to complete my mural. He suggested using house paint, as it is much cheaper than artist acrylics. I will discuss the supplies with Geneva and figure out a way to purchase the materials I need.
Photos of my ideal mural location.
Two sketches to test out concepts for my mural.
Environmental Stewardship
My dad and I enjoy eating out at restaurants. It’s a chance to try new types of food, see parts of San Diego we typically would not, and spending time waiting for our food gives us a chance to connect and catch each other up on what’s going on in our lives. While this is an enjoyable activity for the two of us, driving around our neighborhood in order to try new restaurants generates large amounts of carbon emissions. Recently, my dad and I have begun walking to these restaurants, rather than driving. We’re still able to try new foods, and we get to see more of San Diego walking through our neighborhood than we would driving. In addition, we get to spend more time together as we walk to dinner, and a little bit of exercise beforehand makes the food taste even better.
On Monday, March 2, 2020, we walked to a shwarma truck near our house. These are some photos my dad and I took of the evening out!
Week Two
It should not be surprising that Coronavirus put an unexpected pause on my plans for my honors project. Because of the school shut down, I was not able to measure the wall to determine how much paint I needed, and because of the admonitions for social distancing, I was not allowed out of my house to visit the Living Coast Discovery Center. But, I made do with what I could.
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Although I was not able to visit the San Diego Living Coast Discovery Center to take reference photos and ask questions about animal conservation as I had planned, I was able to use the IUCN Redlist to learn more information about the animals I selected. I learned that the Green Sea Turtle is classified as endangered, the Vaquita is critically endangered, the Blue Whale is endangered, and the California Sheephead is vulnerable. I will add all these underwater creatures to my mural. I also learned that the Garibaldi is not classified as endangered by the IUCN Redlist, but I will include the fish in my painting anyway to add a spot of color.
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Then, I created a thumbnail of the final design for the painting and photoshopped it over the area of the wall that I will be painting. Both of these images are included below. This thumbnail was created in order to plan out roughly what my final mural will look like and to figure out which colors of paint I will need to purchase in bulk. Geneva mentioned that house paint is much cheaper to purchase than regular paint, so I will be buying house paint to complete my mural. According to my research, a gallon of paint can cover about 400 square feet, or enough to cover a small room. While I was not able to measure the space I will be painting, from the photographs I took, I estimate that my space is roughly 10 feet by 30 feet, or 300 square feet. So one gallon of paint should cover all of the background. However, I will be using different colors for my mural, so I will need different colors of paint. One tube of Liquitex Acrylic Paint can cover about nine feet of wallspace, and more paint can be purchased as necessary. My required supplies are listed below:
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2 1-gallon jars of house paint in sky blue and sea blue ($15 per gallon from Home Depot, $30 overall)
6 tubes of Liquitex Basic in White, Black, Red, Yellow, Green and Purple ($5 per bottle at Michaels, $30 overall)
A paint tray and roller (about $9, price varies by location)
Several paintbrushes (which can be borrowed from Jeremy or Dane)
Painter's Tape (which can be borrowed from Jeremy or Dane)
Total Cost: $69
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I will likely not need the Liquitex paint until the background is painted.
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Because school is closed for the Coronavirus and Spring Break, I will likely be researching San Diego conservation organizations, in order to link to them with QR codes on my mural. I will also reach out to Geneva about ways to purchase mural supplies so that everything is ready to paint if we return from spring break to regular schooling.
Environmental Stewardship
This week, I made stickers to raise money for San Diego Coastkeepers. I wanted my stickers to focus around the conservation efforts happening in La Jolla, especially around the Cove. For my sticker design, I painted a Leopard Shark, Yelloweye Rockfish, and a group of Garibaldi fish, all animals found while snorkling in the La Jolla area. I filled in the background with kelp, coral, and shards of glass to represent the amount of seaglass found near the La Jolla Cove area and the impact it has on the animals living there. At the bottom of the sticker, I wrote “Keep Our Beaches Clean.”
I chose to focus on ocean conservation because of the amount of time I’ve spent at La Jolla beaches. My grandma lives in La Jolla, and we would often take trips to the beach together when I was younger. No matter where we went, there would always be some sort of human pollution washed up on shore. I wanted to make a donation to San Diego Coastkeepers so that they can purchase the materials they need to run beach cleanups.
Next week, I am giving away the stickers to people who donate to San Diego Coastkeepers. I’m advertising these stickers through social media, and hope to sell all 11 that I printed.
March 11: I posted the following two images as an Instagram post advertising my stickers.
Week Three
On Thursday, I received an email from Joanna stating that HTHI would not be back in session after spring break. This, along with COVID-19 news updates and news from other schools, made me realize that I may not be able to complete my honors project in a timely manner if I wait for school to reopen to paint my mural. So, I'm shifting gears. Rather than planning to create a mural that I might not be able to paint if my school does not reopen, I'm going to break my mural down into smaller pieces, working with materials that I already own.
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I reached out to Geneva for suggestions with my mural, and she responded with three solutions. The first would be painting a mural in my own community, the second would be designing stickers, and the third would be designing my mural on wallpaper and pasting the results outside Dr. Sarah's classroom. While these are all excellent solutions, the COVID-19 crisis also provided a few obstacles to these solutions. First, because of the shelter in place order, my parents do not want me to go outside the house to paint a mural in my community. Second, because art supply stores are shut down and online stores are taking longer to ship out supplies, I'm going to rely more on supplies that I already own to complete my mural. I own tubes of paint in multiple colors, as well as 12 * 18 sheets of thick watercolor paper. I'm going to paint individual objects for my mural on these sheets of paper, creating a lightbox-like effect, and mount them on Dr. Sarah's wall at different depths. My mural will still feature endangered animals from the San Diego area, but I will alter the design to reflect the changing medium of my "mural".
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I used lightbox art as a reference in order to figure out how to break my mural down into smaller pieces that give off a 3D effect, and created a smaller version of the mural that I had in mind using markers and stiff paper. Photos are included below.
Environmental Stewardship
In order to stay in shape during the Coronavirus pandemic, my family has begun taking hikes around San Diego. It's a good way to get exercise while social distancing, and it's a good way to see places of San Diego that I previously hadn't. So far, we've done trails near Cowl's Mountain and our local dog parks and canyons. The first two photos are taken on a trail near the Balboa Park Dog Park I went on this Friday, March 20, and the last one is from a hike with my dad in the canyon near our house I took Sunday, March 22.
Week Four
This week, I began the process of painting my mural. I began with painting strands of kelp, as they would serve to set a size for the overall mural, which will be around six feet tall. I've decided to paint everything at roughly a 3/4 life scale, but if I paint slightly larger or smaller, I won't lose any sleep over that. I am painting all objects onto stiff watercolor paper, cutting them out and piecing the larger pieces together with blue tape. Below, I have a photograph of the kelp strands mounted on the wall above my bed, but unfortunately I needed to take them down shortly after finishing the photo, since the pieces of paper were too heavy to be supported simply by blue tape. I will pin or staple each piece to the wall once they are permanently mounted.
I also began painting the animals featured on my mural, and so far have painted Garibaldi, Sardines, Leopard Shark, Sheepshead Fish, and Shovelnose Guitarfish. I'm painting the larger animals on multiple pieces of watercolor paper and then piecing the parts together with blue tape. On one of the photos below, I've circled the area of the Shovelnose Guitarfish where I've connected the two pieces together. As I had hoped, the seam is barely noticeable, and the two pieces of paper serve to give depth to the animal.
Environmental Stewardship
This winter, I bought a very nice pair of pants from target. They fit me well, and were sturdy enough to last until quarantine without rips or tears. They had only one problem: no pockets. So, on April 3, I learned how to make pockets, and hand-sewed two pockets into my pants. I got the pockets pattern from a Martha Stewart blog, and cut the pockets out of extra fabric we had at home. I then ripped open the seams of the pants using nail scissors, and sewed the pockets together along the now-opened seam. The pockets turned out very soft, and capable of supporting the weight of my phone and wallet. Making my own pockets also meant that I could control how deep they were, and I made sure that both pockets were capable of fitting my phone with extra room to spare. Since then, I’ve used the stitches I’ve learned while sewing my pants to patch up smaller holes in my clothes, and used the time I spent sewing to give a friend or relative a call.
Final Week
For the rest of the months of April and May, I worked hard to finish my honors project. During April, I finished painting fish found locally at the La Jolla Cove. In addition to the fish I had painted before, I painted a stingray, green sea turtle, moray eel, five perch, about 25 mackerel, and about 40 different senorita fish. During May, I painted the kelp holdfasts, offshore wind turbines, and pieces of trash to show how polluted San Diego's waters are. The real challenge of the month was painting people. I painted 21 different San Diegans, all completing activities that would help with environmentalist efforts. After researching ways to prevent climate change, I painted my people taking carbon-friendly methods of transport, eating low-carbon diets, hosting and attending rallies for climate change, using social media as an activist tool to raise awareness of climate change, and offering out petitions focused on ecological change. I spent about an hour working on each person, making sure they looked lifelike. The final size of the project turned out to be about 6 1/2 feet by 5 1/2 feet, which could be subject to change as it's mounted. Now that the project is done, I hope to mount it on the wall at HTHI with glue or thumbtacks, after painting the backing wall dark blue to mimic the ocean.
Environmental Stewardship
On April 19, I went vegetarian for a day. For breakfast, I had an egg on toast with avocado, and for lunch, I had the remainder of a farro, feta and beet salad that my dad and his girlfriend had made the night before. For dinner, my dad and I cooked a mushroom and dumpling stew, with dumplings made from scratch. In between meals I ate potato chips, and a little snack pack with nuts, cranberries, and cheese. What surprised me about going meatless for a day was how easy it was. While I think that I would miss meat if I went vegetarian for more than a week, there are plenty of good vegetarian options that are still delicious and filling that I'd be willing to eat over meat options. Helping my dad make stew was also a chance for both of us to talk to one another in between chopping up veggies, and we got in a riveting debate over which vegetable was the worst (my dad said squash, his girlfriend said peas, I stuck to celery). I'm looking forward to finding new vegetarian recipes to try out, and to making them with my dad.
To the right: The breakfast I had, and the remains of the farro salad and stew in our fridge.
