10 weeks in Hawaii with NOAA's Marine National Monuments

Aloha! I’ve just returned from a wonderful 10 weeks interning at NOAA’s Pacific Island Regional Office in Honolulu. The final requirement for graduation from CSU Monterey Bay’s natural science illustration program is an internship in the field. I was lucky to work with Malia Chow and the rest of the team at NOAA Fisheries working on habitat conservation and, specifically, Marine National Monuments. My task was to create a large, “catalog” illustration depicting the Marianas Trench ecosystem and linking to a set of lesson plans for 8-12 graders in the region. The poster will be used in the spring around meetings focused on the Monument’s management plan.

This was my biggest scientific illustration project to date, and I really got a chance to stretch my skills and integrate much of what I learned in the past year at CSUMB. I decided to render the illustration in fluid acrylics, a medium I had only tried in passing, and I really enjoyed working with it. In the gallery of photos, I’ll take you through my process, which started with extensive research, deciding what creatures and elements to include, finding reference photos (largely from NOAA’s own expeditions), and getting feedback from scientists and managers. I’m really happy with the way this turned out. It’s a poster that I would have loved to have on my wall when I was in school.

The view from NOAA's office

The Pacific Island Regional Office is located on Ford Island, in the middle of Pearl Harbor.

Concept Sketches

After reading all the NOAA lesson plans and doing a lot of research, I identified elements I thought should be included in the poster in a simple sketch. I then took this to the Monuments and Communications teams for feedback.

Preliminary Linework

Once I got feedback on the concept, I made revisions and started drawing the clean, final linework for each of the elements.

Preliminary Illustration

I then combined all the preliminary drawings into one layout (using Photoshop), and got more feedback and revisions from my managing team.

Transfer

Once I got final signoff, I started transferring the preliminary linework to the really nice paper I’d paint each element (separately) on. Transferring is perhaps the most tedious part of the process.

Finally... Painting!

Finally I got to start laying down paint. I decided to try fluid acrylics, after loving goauche. It is similarly a water-based paint which can be used in washes and to build up opaque layers. After consulting with a couple of my professors, I decided to paint the elements separately and combine them digitally, for the most flexibility and efficiency.

Painting at the Office

Here I am working on a reef component at my NOAA desk.

Reef and Deepwater Fishes Complete

Here are a few of the fishes I painted for the Marianas Trench composition, finished and ready for scanning and uploading.

Painting the Background Image

When creating illustrations, it’s best to at least render them at the same size they will be printed—if not a little bigger. So, I painted the background for the poster in a large format, which was fun and loose.

Placing Elements

Once all the painting was done, I placed all the elements in the poster layout using Photoshop, which also allowed me to integrate them using shading and other techniques.

A snapshot of the final illustration

Here’s a portion of the final illustration, once I integrated all the paintings. On top of this, I used InDesign to add text and other design elements.

Final poster layout 1

I created two poster layouts for NOAA. This one includes a list of all the creatures and features in the Marianas Trench poster.

Final poster layout 2

And this one includes links to all the NOAA lesson plans. It also includes a depth profile of the Trench. Since the illustration itself is representational and not to scale, we felt it was important to give a sense of how wide and deep the trench and Monument area actually is. NOAA will be printing out these posters and distributing them in the region in spring 2020.