Hey everyone. My name is Andrea and I’m a student at UAF. I’ve lived in Fairbanks for 3 years, originally from Dallas, TX. My major is Wildlife Biology and Conservation and this is the first science class I’ve taken so far. I’ve been away from school since… well, 1999, so I’m redoing some refresher math courses and I’ve taken 2 drawing classes. I really love nature a lot but I know very little about plants. I know they’re nice to look at and I really really enjoy drawing them. I’m not a great artist or anything but I love taking nature walks outside and looking at and appreciating the birch. When I draw or do any type of art, I really gravitate mostly to plants and landscapes. I also really enjoy drawing birch. Spruce, on the other hand, to get fine details down, well it takes a lot of precision and patience. Most of my plant drawings are done in charcoal or soft pastels (basically the same thing but soft pastels are in color), and I did a pineapple in pencil. I did actually go into the UAF greenhouse to practice drawing plants as a field trip for my Drawing Class. I did a lot of venus fly traps (and added a taco for comedy).
I am currently working a summer job and have plans to go to Cancun during the 2nd week of August so I’m looking at a busy summer with this class and work. I’ll admit that I don’t know much Biology yet and I’m not well-versed in big Latin words. I love nature and I can’t wait to learn in this class. I’ll attach some of my plant drawings that I did over the past year.
As for what I’m using, I have an Iphone X and also a microscope that will eventually attach to my laptop. I got the microscope last summer for my birthday and haven’t really used it much. I did buy the glasses off amazon with the light attached so I’ll try to set all that up today and also try to put my flower press together.
Thanks for reading!
Andrea Vance
Welcome Andrea,
Thanks for sharing your plant drawings. It sounds like you are well prepared for taking this class. Yes, there are lots of terms and lots of videos, but you will see that you can take it one week at a time and there is lots of things to do and to earn credit for, and hopefully the format of taking the quizzes with as many attempts as possible will allow you cruise through this class. I love drawing and painting plants. I think if you have a keen sense of observation, you will be a good botanist/ scientist. Since a lot of the organismal biology classes use pattern recognition. I think you will find this class will get you to make observation and compare certain parts of a plant with another so that you can tell them apart. If you can use the right terminology to describe the various parts, that would be awesome, but a basic knowledge and use of these terms will be a great outcome from this class. So please relax and see how it goes. There is a deck of AK Flora ID cards that I have made that is available in the UA Museum gift shop, it has my drawings and images of AK plants in it. You might find it interesting.
Welcome Andrea,
Thanks for sharing your plant drawings. It sounds like you are well prepared for taking this class. Yes, there are lots of terms and lots of videos, but you will see that you can take it one week at a time and there is lots of things to do and to earn credit for, and hopefully the format of taking the quizzes with as many attempts as possible will allow you cruise through this class. I love drawing and painting plants. I think if you have a keen sense of observation, you will be a good botanist/ scientist. Since a lot of the organismal biology classes use pattern recognition. I think you will find this class will get you to make observation and compare certain parts of a plant with another so that you can tell them apart. If you can use the right terminology to describe the various parts, that would be awesome, but a basic knowledge and use of these terms will be a great outcome from this class. So please relax and see how it goes. There is a deck of AK Flora ID cards that I have made that is available in the UA Museum gift shop, it has my drawings and images of AK plants in it. You might find them useful.
Welcome Andrea, I love your art! I especially think you did exceptionally well on the spruce that you provided (I know you said they are particularly difficult to draw because of their complexity). You really managed to capture the needles in that piece.
Wow thanks a lot!!!