A Watershed Moment

Several months back I was approached by the Educational Communications department at the University of Idaho.  They're composing a manual on water quality.  Specifically, this manual educates people in communities throughout the Northwest on ways to monitor water quality, stream health, etc.  I was told the job would be a fairly large one and asked if I was interested in creating the illustrations for it.

It took me zero seconds to answer "Yes."  I love almost every flavor in the spice rack of illustration.  Except drawing cars.  Drawing cars is the Cardamom of the illustration spice rack (Heh heh: "CAR-damom"...get it?).  Some people love it and some recipes call for it, but I just don't understand it and I'm no good at it.  Back to the point: I love illustration, but I particularly love technical and scientific illustrations, of which I would consider these water quality illustrations to be a subset.  I'll take every job that gives me the opportunity to draw the natural world.  I also genuinely enjoy the precision and detail of technical illustrations.  So, that was the "why."

The job itself consisted of 9 illustrations total: Watershed, Stream Transect, Stream Transect with Width and Depth Measurements, Stream Reach, Sinuosity, Riparian Transect, Pebble Count, Pool Run Riffle and Glide, and Lake Sampling.

All in all, this was a great project: Lots of detail to sink my teeth into, new information (some of which I might even be able to apply when fly fishing), and all sorts of great variety.

I'll post the remaining illustrations in the next installment.

Cheers.