Last Saturday was the 24 Hour Comics Day challenge, and SCAD in Atlanta had several different challenges going on in addition to the comics. There were illustration, animation, painting, sculpture, and various other challenges going on, so people were working all day and all night on a bunch of really cool stuff. My husband, Goñi, even won an Adobe Creative Suite 4 software package for his Firebreather pinup.
Since I’m not a SCAD student, I didn’t participate in any of the challenges, but I did keep myself busy all night drawing a few endemic Puerto Rican birds. The one seen above is the Puerto Rican Nightjar, a very rare and critically endangered bird that inhabits the southwestern part of the island. The Nightjar’s plumage is mottled with browns and blacks to help it camouflage itself with the forest floor.
The second bird shown here is the Puerto Rican Tody, a very small bird with bright green plumage on its back, white on its belly, and bright red on its throat. This bird is widespread on the island but is generally too small to be seen easily. You know one is close because of their loud and nasally beep calls.
The last bird that I drew at the challenge was the Puerto Rican Lizard-Cuckoo. These birds are quite large and are easily identifiable by the large white spots on their tail feathers. The rest of the bird is grayish tan, but they have red eyes and a reddish underbelly. These birds can be found in forests throughout the island but might be a little hard to see because of their very slow movements. Despite being so slow, they’re actually very good at catching lizards, which are their main source of food.
In all, I was at SCAD from about 8PM to 6AM, so I spent about 10 hours on these (though I goofed off for a while as well, so the actual working time was about 8 or 9 hours). All of these were drawn with technical pens - I mainly used a 0.7mm for outlines and a 0.1mm for shading and small details.
The birds are shown here in the order that I drew them, so if you notice any declining quality, it’s probably due to exhaustion.
Why did I choose to illustrate Puerto Rican endemic birds? I’m a bird maniac and I’m Puerto Rican, so it’s a match made in heaven! Also, I wanted to supplement my portfolio with some technical illustrations because the style comes more naturally to me than editorial work (I am an engineer after all).
