Camouflage, a view, down low and something straight

The final instalment of my Summer Nature Scavenger Hunt art challenge series

And here we are at the end of August and I have completed my Summer Nature Scavenger Hunt art challenge! At the beginning of the English school summer holidays, I set myself a challenge to spend some time each week noticing and recording nature, in response to a series of 24 prompts.

Here’s my completed grid of 24 4cm x 4cm squares:

Camouflage - paint splatter moth

The Peppered Moth is famous for being a perfect example of Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection. In it's usual form, it is white and peppered with black dots on the wings and body to allow it to be perfectly camouflaged against lichen-covered tree bark. However, during the nineteenth century as soot and other pollutants entered the air, it's peppered camouflage was no longer effective and an all black variant developed in response, to blend in to soot-stained walls, etc.

I spotted the peppered variety of this moth in our local cemetery earlier in the summer and knew it would make the perfect candidate for the prompt of 'camouflage'. I thought I'd experiment with paint spatter for this square and started by using an old toothbrush and a medium-sized paint brush to 'spatter' drops of black watercolour paint across a piece of paper.

I then cut out my moth shape and stuck it to the square, before adding some details with more watercolour and a fine paint brush.

A View - Cheviot in pastels

On a fine day you can see the Cheviot Hills from Berwick-upon-Tweed where we live - but they’re an interesting view because they always look different from different vantage points and quite often they completely disappear, depending on the weather conditions.

I used pastel pencils for this view as the square was too small to use soft pastels. I very lightly sketched out the elements in pencil and then used blue/white/purple to blend in the sky and purple/green/blue to block in the Cheviot hills, adding some shadow with my Sepia colour. I then added the green/yellow/ochre mid- and foreground to represent the fields and added in some dark green/sepia hedgerows to show the field edges.

Down low - a watercolour ladybird

Much as I’ve enjoyed experimenting with different media and techniques, I went back to good old watercolour for this prompt of ‘down low’. I was literally stooping down to pick-up after the dog earlier this week, when I noticed a ladybird amongst the leaf litter! So here she is:

Something straight - birch trees in watercolour

For my final prompt of ‘something straight’ I spent some time searching in our local area, as technically nature doesn’t have any ‘straight’ lines! Fortunately, the local Council planted some young birch trees a couple of years ago in partnership with my daughter’s First school. If you’ve never noticed, birch trees do have incredibly straight-growing trunks for a tree.

I used a technique that involves using an old credit card and watercolour paint to make my birch tree trunks.

First I picked up some blue/grey paint by mixing a dark brown and a deep blue watercolour together. Then I chopped a bit off an old loyalty card - you just dip the edge of the card in the paint and then scrape it left to right, then right to left to create the distinctive birch bark. You can see I did a couple of practice attempts! Once this layer was dry, I added a bit of watery paint to one side of the trunks for shadow.

Final reflections

Fairly early on in the process of doing this Scavenger Hunt art challenge, I decided that part of the challenge would be to see if I could use a wide range of materials and approaches in my responses and I’m really pleased I did as it was so much fun rediscovering things like sgraffito, or actually taking some of my pristine-kept-for-best art supplies out of their packaging and having a go! I quickly learnt to leave behind perfectionism and just enjoy the process.

If you followed along, I hope you had as much fun as I did! Do note that although I labelled this as a ‘summer’ challenge, there’s no reason that you couldn’t do this activity at any time of year, so why not have a go now as Autumn starts to arrive. Honestly, just giving yourself permission to spend five minutes in nature, looking for a response to one of the prompts and then recording it however you want to, is a great way to get some nature ‘snacks’ into your life!

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You can find out more about my Summer Nature Scavenger Hunt Art Challenge (and download your own grid) in this post: