The first animal I’ve ever conceived to draw for the icons project was the grey seal. It was initially going to be drawn as a full body, but the project was downscaled to include the head alone. The seal was based on a licensed photo created by Mateusz Sciborski, but the appearance of the seal is slightly slimmer than the round look of the illustration. (However, the illustration counts as a derivative due to using a photograph as a base and is currently removed to publicly release without troubling existing copyright.) The body was formed with circles, with pen strokes used to connect and form the body. The free form gradient uses a combination of points and connected lines to form the brightness and appearance scene in the reference. However, the skin color looks greenish rather than using a combination of greyscale and the specific colors used on the light white fur of the photograph. If This Icon were to be redone, it would have beneficial to be less derived from the reference and more in line with the styles of the other icons.
At this point in the project, the research has been shifted from focusing on animals impacted by different human industries, to animals impacted by chemicals in the environment. This change was made due to familiarity with animals being impacted by chemicals, for it allowed more interest to seek out the 6 animals needed for the project. This also allows me to adapt topics that I was familiar with previously such as the mercury poisoning that occurs in Minamata and PFAS impacting wildlife currently. The grey seal was kept in the final project to represent PBC & DDT instead of being the main representative of an animal impacted by the chemical industry.
During the research for the project, I’ve came across two animals that are impacted in the same location, but in different ways. Both Oysters and the Blue Heron, shown in the middle row, have both been impacted by Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). However, Oysters are impacted By HABs through the high concentration of nitrogen, while Herons were impacted by being in contact with HABs. Both species have been impacted by HABs in the Chesapeake Bay area.
The black porgy, freshwater turtle, and Dungeness crab have been late inclusions to the project with the last two chosen on a whim to complete the project. To limit using copyrighted images, the rest of the referenced for the other animals relied on public domain rights. They weren’t free to use images for the cutlass fish, for the switch to the black porgy was made to represent the Minamata disaster. For PFAS, we went with the freshwater turtle due to having high concentration of the chemical according to a chart copyrighted by Elsevier. Both the turtle and seal are similar in how the mothers can transmit chemicals to their children. The turtle transmits PFAS through laying eggs, while the seal transfer PBC & DDT when they feed their children. The Dungeness Crab was added to represent CO2 impacting its environment through chemical reactions that causes acidification.
