Trip to Bonaire: Underwater Sketching - Turtle City

The east side of the island of Bonaire has an amazing spot for diving. I accessed it via shore once before, but this year, a boat ride allowed a much more reasonable approach to a very cool underwater location where one can see multiple turtles at once. During an almost an hour-long trip underwater, I tried to capture both the turtles and the landscape.

Trip to Bonaire: Plants

Before my trip, I thought, "I am not entirely sure how anything grows on Bonaire, so I do not think I will need to worry about greens. I was so, so wrong! Even these few sketches of plants will tell you a different story, and they do not do justice to the greens you might see on the island! And there are regular rains and a forest on the island! The sounds of palm trees were one of my favorite sounds during this trip, and they were the only plants with adequate shade to sketch :)

Persimmon Galore

This year presented me with some wonderful persimmons to sketch! Thank you to everyone who contributed :)

What I Packed For A Trip (Underwater Sketching Kit)

I already shared what I used for my surface sketching on a recent trip, and this is a story of what I took with me to sketch underwater. 

Now, normally, I would start with a photo of my setup with some written comments. However, this time the sea took somewhat more of my tools than usual, so I cannot show you all of them - but I have older photos and some stories as to how this happened, and, hopefully, how to prevent this from happening in the future are at the end of this post. 

So here is what is in my basic kit for sketching underwater:

A. support board (8.5" x 6", thickness 1/16" , made out larger of Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) board, available at any construction or plastic store) 

B. water-resistant paper (this time I used GAK stone paper notebook cut to the size of my board)

C. binder clip to hold A to B

D. elastic band to make sure that pages are not "flying" (the movement of water when you are scuba diving is quite like a wind since you are in constant motion, not to mention that oftentimes you will have a current, which means a strong wind).

E. Pencil with a lanyard so that it can be attached either to my hand or to the board.

I have a variety of pencils - from a regular drawing pencil to which a nylon string was attached with superglue, to several chisel or flat pencils (to vary my line), to some pencils that were marketed as specifically created for scuba diving - you can see them all below. My favorite ones are listed in this post: https://blog.apple-pine.com/2025/01/underwater-sketching-kit.html.

And I also take some colored pencils with me often. Having multiple colors in one tool is a big win, as everything that I take with me underwater needs to be attached to my body, and having too many things is not realistic to manage. So I use double-sided red and blue pencils or multi-color (aka rainbow) pencils and stick them in my wrist band (which I made out of a wide elastic band myself).

During this trip, I also took oil pastels with me. Since this was effectively a test run for this setup, I took pastels from as many manufacturers as I could find in my studio and used a little plastic bag with a lanyard to carry them. Every time I wanted to use one of these colors, I would open the bag, get one color out, and close the bag. Fortunately, pastels themselves are negatively buoyant, which means that they would not shoot to the surface the moment I opened my little bag.

Here is an image of my tools and how my set-up looked like:

Oil Pastel Manufacturers I used were:
Faber-Castell Grip Oil Pastels
Mungyo Gallery Artists' Soft Oil Pastels
Sennelier Oil Pastels
Caran d’Ache Neoart 6901 Wax Oil Pastels

(I took only one of each with me underwater to start). 

Naturally, the most expensive one (Sennelier) I lost right away, so I cannot say how well it would work.

Out of the remaining three brands, the Faber-Castell Grip Oil Pastels were the ones most affected by the pressure at the depth - they lost more of their ability for smooth application and did not give out color willingly, mostly creating uneven coverage, which felt like catching on the surface. 

Mungyo Gallery was amazingly malleable and retained its quality of drawing both when used at the edge to make a line and at the side to cover a large surface. But they also shed quite a bit of pigment onto other pastel sticks. And the highest level of control, clearness of line, and texture of application on a side were achieved with Caran d’Ache Neoart 6901 Wax Oil Pastels.

And here are some notes on what I lost and learned from this trip:

First, I lost my binder clip, which connected my board and paper pad. Then I found it, but then I lost it again. This is a moment to remember that two is one and one is none - I should have two clips.

Then I lost my support board. It was positively buoyant and shot to the surface when I spent too much time looking at a tiny cleaning shrimp that was sitting inside a beautiful sea anemone. I was trying to move as little as possible to get closer to the creature, and accidentally let go of my drawing setup and caught only the paper pad when it started floating away. I also lost a few pencils - some fell apart due to salt and pressure exposure (not much to do with this 0 just bring more spares), and one I took with me to a dusk dive and put it away in my pouch when it got dark, but it was not there when I surfaced. You will see that some of my materials have hairbands on a string, and I carried them on my wrist. However, hairbands become really tight at the depth, and while they work great to attach things to things like my webbing or clip, they are not suitable for my wrist - my hand-made pencil holder made out of a wide elastic band is still the best - but it is coming apart, and I should make a new one for the next trip. Carrying pastels in one would not be possible, as they get quite soft and would be hard to push in, and might lose a lot of their body. The current plastic baggie is a workable solution, but it takes some time to rummage through to get the right color out. 

 

Actual sketches (with some comments on the materials) are coming soon - I made over 50 pages of sketches underwater and sorting through them proved to be a bit of herculean task :)

Here is a link to my previous post on this subject - from a previous scuba diving trip:

https://blog.apple-pine.com/2025/01/underwater-sketching-kit.html

What I Packed for a Trip (An Interesting New Brush)

For a vacation to a warm sea, I packed two separate drawing bags: one for an underwater sketching kit (I will make a separate post about it and link it here) and a surface sketching kit. This is a quick overview of what went into my surface sketching kit. Not pictured here are my water container, little water spraying bottle, towel, and a backup watercolor set, which I basically did not unpack. I made separate photos of what I thought I would actually use and what not, and got it pretty accurately. A new brush is a R24 Eradicator which I borrowed from Suhita Shirodkar for testing and ended up taking with me - it is a brush that is supposed to "lift out brights or soften hard edges in your watercolor painting" - basically for lifting. But because it holds very little water, it was an interesting tool to use with gouache, as water control is one of the things that is especially tricky when using a dry palette. Basically, it allows me to get more pigment because I can scrub on the dry well very well with it, and the only water I use in this case is some spraying of the palette. Having several pads of paper to take on location was very useful. Though now I need to combine this all into my main sketchbook :)

Magnolia Trees Give Me Gifts Twice a Year

Magnolia Trees gift me two seasonal pleasures every year. There us time to draw their Flowers and then there is time to draw their Seed Pods. 

Magnolia Seed Pods are gorgeous and complicated, they can be a reason for a walk (and walking at unusual times means I might need a reason, and my reason this season is to find "my new magnolia seedpod tree). They are familiar, yet never the same, hence can work both as a comfort sketch (when I have very limited time and/or attention or ability to draw) or a reason to experiment (when I have some time and capacity to try materials and ideas). So here are some of the pods that I drew and decided to save in my sketchbook:

A Perfect Day in The Forest

I took my pocket gouache palette and small sketchbook on a hike. It was a perfect forest hike in the mountains with temperatures changing quickly. I saw lots of banana slugs, all sorts of mushrooms and many signs that this forest is shared by many creatures. 

Experiment Result: Changing my Schedule to Get More Walks During Daytime Results in More Sketches! (and a happier me)

I actually like when time changes twice a year, but not in a rational way. 

I like lights everywhere and special baking projects that I start when this time arrives. I like that mornings are lighter (at least for a bit), and I like that later I can track changes in the light as the day begins. 

Rationally, I know that this sudden change is a cause for a lot of stress to a lot of people, including me! In reality, I am unhappy that it gets dark so early, and my evening walks are a struggle, a fight with myself that I start to lose. So this year, to get a cure for my struggles, I decided to embrace morning or lunch walks - and this brought some sketching opportunities!

 

Fall in the Garden

The fall in our little garden was abundant! First of all, an ipomoea (aka Morning Glory), which I've been trying to get to bloom for quite some time, suddenly decided that perfect timing is in... November!

Chrysanthemums got super leggy, and I even cut some to put in a handmade vase.

And our eggplant-in-a-pot pushed out two more fruits! (They were tiny but very pretty and tasty).

Reading Notes: A Graphic Novel Adaptation I Loved!

Three things will help you with the background on how I chose this book: 

1. I read many books simultaneously, and one of the categories of books that emerged relatively recently is graphic novels. I do not have a comics-reading background to lean on, so this is a new way of reading that I am embracing as a part of my kaleidoscope of consuming stories. 

2. When I encounter a new topic that I would like to familiarize myself with or when I am having a hard time reading a book (or finishing it), one of the strategies that I've found helpful is to look for a kids' version on the same topic. 

3. The "Hidden Life of Trees" by Peter Wohlleben is a very interestingly titled book that came highly recommended, and I really wanted to love it. I checked out of the library several times, but somehow never finished. So when I saw a graphic adaptation by Fred Bernard, I had to check it out, and now I am happy to report - it is a glorious graphic novel!

Benjamin Flao is a comic artist with a fabulous line of a dip pen in a flexible ink who did all the illustrations. There is a lot of light in this book! It is filled with trees and plants and all sorts of creatures. I especially enjoyed pages where the artist used a scale distortion! (see below how our main hero is crawling inside the tree to explain the parts of the bark?) I used to own a book on human anatomy where the main character was traveling through the body - I cannot find the name of the book, but it was a real thrill to follow through the adventures. Our protagonist has a companion with a great grin and a happy tail. There are four seasons, which are illustrated with such care! And through all the ups and downs of this story, I felt very much invested. This kind of feeling is something I treasure.

And it was obvious that the artist loves to draw. I am sure that by the end of drawing 235 pages on the same subject - and in a multi-panel comics structure to boot, anyone would be really happy to do a different project. Yet the line is alive and playful. It reminded me of a "Carnet de Voyage" graphic novel by cartoonist Craig Thompson in the way he enjoys building compositions of amazing humans, architecture, and animals intertwined on a page made with the Pentel pocket brush (my love for this tool is abound). I love "Carnet de Voyage" more than "Blankets" - possibly because the subject is much closer to me, and possibly because it feels like it was drawn in a much freer way - the way "Hidden Life of Trees" is drawn in.

On My Table: Beginning of Dovember 2025

Today is actually December first - and this mess needs to be sorted out before I start my "first day of the month" list of things, so I'd better post this quickly! 

I am in the process of sending a whole bunch of holiday greetings out. They are printed in a batch, but then each card gets a custom layer of paint - in addition to the hand-written greeting on the back. That is a big part of what is going on here. I am also planning a trip, so there are quite a few tools for pen and palette refills.

African Violets getting ready to winter.

Things in front of me on my drawing table are what I draw when I have a new paint to test, a new idea to try, have no clue what I should be doing next, and just want to draw, or have only two minutes and a ballpoint pen. Hence, my African Violets Series.