The Field Notebook

An interesting part of this trip will be keeping a field notebook. Here is what it says on the syllabus:

“Students are required to keep a field notebook throughout the semester. Information recorded in the notebook should include observations from field trips, orientation walks, plant taxonomy exercises, etc. Students are strongly encouraged to personalize the field notebook by including observations of their own. Examples of observations that might be included are drawings and descriptions of interesting spiders; a list of birds or herps sited at each field station; climatic conditions, etc. Field notebooks are collected at the end of the course and graded based on completeness, neatness, and effort.”

In all of the excursions I’ve been on, my ‘notebook’ has always been my brain, or my camera. Neatness is not one of my strong points and I’m more the type to just sit back and let the experience wash over me rather than jot everything down. However, I am glad that this has been made a requirement. No doubt it will force me to pay attention to details more closely and, like this blog, it will help organize my memories of Costa Rica.

But I’m also glad because this will give me a chance to work on my drawing. I mostly do cartoonish and tattoo design work right now, but classes like these inspire me to work more on scientific/realistic. I love movement and anatomy, so hopefully I will be able to capture this with a pencil as well as with my camera… I would love to take pictures of my notebook and share it on this blog from time to time.

I’ve been practicing (kind of), because I know when I see that beautiful animal, it probably won’t be posing for me, but disappear in the wink of an eye. I need to work on speed, and stop focusing on tiny details when I’m drawing in the field. For now I have the luxury of Google Images, but soon that won’t be the case. I need to familiarize myself with the flora and fauna of Costa Rica while I still have Wikipedia at my disposal.

For now though, here are some examples of what I intend to do:

(above: spider monkey, below: yawning jaguar. Used references from google)