Trip to Bonaire: Sketching and Scuba Diving - Remainder Sketches and a SURPRISE

In this post I collected the rest of the underwater sketches from Bonaire - these were mostly done with just a pencil or a couple of pencils or my rainbow pencil. These have more notes, and you can see some rust where my clip was holding the page. Click on the image to see it larger. Every sketch has a little story - but I picked the ones where people can read some notes and see it happening, share my excitement from finding lobster in the cave, or marvel at the colors of the peacock flounder, and my amazement at the coral restoration efforts that Bonaire researchers are spearheading. I saw quite a few places where corals were visibly restored, and it is such a welcome sight! 

And here is a surprise - I have a bunch of sketches that I did not share - they are a part of an article in the “On The Spot” - The Magazine of Graphic Journalism published by Sketcher Press. It is available online and will be published in paper in June - but for now, if you are a subscriber, you can read it already - and if not, I will share some of the images next week.

Protest Sketching

This:

1. Solidarity with human beings. Minnesota, you rock!

2. Truth is important - believe your eyes, use your brain.

3. Document what is happening. Protest. Call. Defend your freedom of speech. Our democracy depends on it.

4. Nobody should be above the law. 

 

Trip to Bonaire: Sketching and Scuba Diving - My Favorite Sketches

In my previous post with underwater sketches, I shared results of my oil pastel experiments and mentioned that I enjoyed using a tip or sharp edge of the crayon to add details or even write in some instances, but I found a better way to do so. And what I share below is probably my favorite combination of materials so far: I used pastels to make larger shapes, add texture, and differentiate value, and then I added details with a much more precise and predictable tool - pencil!

All Posts re: Bonaire 2025:

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

2. What I Packed For A Trip (Underwater Sketching Kit)

3. Trip to Bonaire: Plants
4. Trip to Bonaire: Underwater Sketching - Turtle City

5. Trip to Bonaire: Almost Domestic Animals

6. Trip to Bonaire: Sketching and Scuba Diving - Oil Pastels and Salt Water Mix Nicely

Post-Holiday Feelings

The holiday decorations are packed and back in the storage. It was a nice year with many cards which we put under a tree (and a few of them ended up on a tree this year!). We connected with many people, and I am grateful for the chance to do so. We did not add any new decorations to the collection this year, but I have a feeling we will make some for the next one. As always, I wish I had drawn more, and yet what I drew is what the holidays were like: lots of tiny moments of light.

Recent Forged Bouquets

My friend Jennifer Gaskin is a talented bouquet artist (among many other things - for example - have you seen her recent pastel works??). And Jennifer is a professional forager for those bouquets (if you are interested in what it means ti be a professional forager - let me know and I will gladly draw you a picture!). Jenifer's works are always multi-layered and intriguing (where did you find that plant that works so well with this one??). And she pushed my natural interest in foraging into bouquet making too. Here are some sketches or recent bouquets my family put together:

Trip to Bonaire: Sunsets and Bioluminescence

Here is a thing about sunsets - there is one every day, people generally agree that they are gorgeous, and looking at them is a good way to spend your time. But we rarely see them. So during my trip to Bonaire, I wanted to make sure that I had a chance to see some sunsets - and it worked - but not 100% - and for a good reason! I missed a few sunsets because I did a few dusk-to-night dives. There is no good view of the setting sun underwater: everything gets darker and less colorful, and that's it! But that is the time when new animals emerge. After the sun is gone, you can see bioluminescence in the sea, and that is one of the most amazing things to look at, in my opinion. Bonaire has a prominent bioluminescence (when you see light by moving the water - clapping or swimming) but it is also famous for its predictable twice-a-month show of ostracods - tiny crustaceans that emit light to communicate with their potential partners (think underwater fireflies). I tried to take my sketching tools with me to these dives, but quickly discarded the idea of drawing. For one, we dove without lights, so it was really dark (don't worry - we had lights with us, but turned them off on purpose). And keeping track of your air supply, position, and buoyancy, where your diving buddy is - all that was a big enough load without light to keep me completely occupied. But also the view is incredibly unusual, and for me it was a much better experience to look at this fantastic show of light than think where my tools are and how to draw something... quite undrawable :) I found this video to show you something that might explain my thing about ostracods: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6R4lWIZSw4

All Posts re: Bonaire 2025:

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

2. What I Packed For A Trip (Underwater Sketching Kit)

3. Trip to Bonaire: Plants
4. Trip to Bonaire: Underwater Sketching - Turtle City

5. Trip to Bonaire: Almost Domestic Animals

6. Trip to Bonaire: Sketching and Scuba Diving - Oil Pastels and Salt Water Mix Nicely

Recent Cooking Adventures

Holidays are usually a non-stop baking situation in my household, and this year was not different. However, there were some new-ish and quite colorful cooking adventures which I sketched: Sobolo, Fermented Cabbage, and Pickled Veggies. Should I go back to making a cookbook? :)

 

Trip to Bonaire: Sketching and Scuba Diving - Oil Pastels and Salt Water Mix Nicely

I wrote about my experiment with bringing oil pastels of different brands with me to my underwater sketching adventures on Bonaire. And below are several sketches which will show you how I: 

• layered different colors (a lot of snugging, hard to judge results)
• used a side of the pastel crayon to cover a large part of the page quicker (enjoyed A LOT)
• how different pressure to different parts of the crayon created interesting texture variation (enjoyed A LOT)
• how I used a tip or sharp edge of the crayon to add details or even write in some instances (this is ok - but I found a better way - will collect those sketches into a separate post).

Bear in mind that all the colors look very different when you are looking at them under 60-70 feet of water, so most of my color choices had to be "blind". I tried to limit the number of colors that I took with me, and remember the overall shape of the crayon, and remember how the hue would shift (from the theory that red color disappears first and so on), and from previous experience.

All Posts re: Bonaire 2025:

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

2. What I Packed For A Trip (Underwater Sketching Kit)

3. Trip to Bonaire: Plants
4. Trip to Bonaire: Underwater Sketching - Turtle City

5. Trip to Bonaire: Almost Domestic Animals

On My Table: Beginning of January 2026

I finished my sketchbook #163 on December 31st, so January met me with a choice between sketchbooks - which one do you think I ended up going with? In this photo you will see three options I was choosing from.

This month, the photo is not of my table, because I made myself a portable little studio on a box and was working where there was a space in the house. It contained a jar with water, favorite ink, some favorite pens, scissors, glue, tape, gouache, and a box with tiny pencils - all of this made for a cozy picture under my tree when I ended up perched there choosing my next sketchbook. 

 

Year in Sketchbooks - 2025

This is a glance into my year-end summary of things. One of my metrics is how many sketchbooks I filled - and this year I managed to finish my sketchbook #163 on December 31st! Which means that I got to start a new sketchbook on the very first day of the year!! But within the 365 days of 2025 I worked in six sketchbooks (I was about 1/2 way through the #158 when the year began). All of these sketchbooks have many additional pages taped and glued in, so it is hard to judge by the number only. For example, my sketchbook 163 gained over 500 grams from the things that I added to it! Somehow stickers were not applied to sketchbook #159 :) (and #162 - but that one has such a gorgeous paper on the cover that stickers could not compete!). Last Year I worked in 4 1/2 sketchbooks, a year before that - in 7. I linked previous "year in sketchbook" posts below if you are interested.

These sketchbooks are filled with lots of experiments as I tried some new materials and brought gouache back into my toolbox (one of the things I wanted to do this year). Printmaking. Travel (Chicago, Seattle, Toronto, New York, and Pennsylvania, and Bonaire). Teaching. Gardening. Caregiving. Protests. Reading. Drawing with friends online and in real life. Some good museum visits. Cooking new things, finding new treasures, new places to draw, kayaking, and scuba diving with a sketchbook. All in all - not a day without drawing - thank you 2025! I am adjusting some tags on this blog and hopefully will add better links to this post as a result!

Previous Year in Sketchbooks:

2024
2023 
2022
2021
2020
2018

Trip to Bonaire: Almost Domestic Animals

Bonaire has a large population of donkeys that descend from the animals brought by Spanish settlers many years ago. Now they are feral, and you can see them everywhere. In fact, there are so many of them that there is even a donkey sanctuary. But I met this cheerful burrow as it was passing our place of residence.

Bonaire also has lots of feral goats that I saw, but somehow I did not sketch even one. However, a bunch of cats visited our house. One of them had an ear clipped, and based on the fact that all other cats would run away as soon as this gorgeous blackness with whiskers appeared on the fence, I thought that the ear was damaged in some important war. Later, I found out that Bonaire has a program for Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), and as a result, cats get the ear clip. We observed daily people-watching and bird-catching activities, but for me, the best part was the impression this character left on other cats.

Apart from these two visitors, we were regularly entertained by a small flock of brown-throated parakeets (prikichi in papiamenu) who, in their endemic to Bonaire version, have a very radiant yellow head. My problem with drawing these birds was the fact that I did not bring a bright enough green pencil :)

All Posts re: Bonaire 2025:

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

2. What I Packed For A Trip (Underwater Sketching Kit)

3. Trip to Bonaire: Plants
4. Trip to Bonaire: Underwater Sketching - Turtle City