Global GeoARTBlitz 2025

Observing nature through art

Explorer and artist Roseann Hanson invited fellow naturalists to join in the Global GeoARTBlitz project on the app iNaturalist in conjunction with the Royal Geographic Society over July 19th through 27th. With the iNaturalist app, you can record observations of various flora, fauna, and more. The GeoARTBlitz project was developed as a way to explore the intersection of art and science. As someone who adores scientific art and exploration journals, and a longtime fan of Roseann’s work, I was quite excited by the idea.

We traveled to Lewis-Clark Trail State Park, Columbia Plateau Trail, and various other locations wherever we could find untouched wild zones or riparian areas. And some species flat out surprised me (giant artichokes, anyone?!) and begged to be included even though they were cultivated and not wild.

Here are some selected sketches from the week:

For the artists in the crowd: I’m using a Faber-Castell warm grey Pitt brush pen for the initial sketches, followed by a black Pilot G2 pen to create the contour drawing and cross-hatched shading. I have to be careful not to work too soon over the brush pen, or cover the ballpoint with the brush pen, as the inks react significantly with each other and the black bleeds strongly into the grey. After the bones are on the paper, I follow up with some basic Prismacolor pencil for added details (usually some combination of white, terracotta, indigo blue, or olive green). Additionally, I’m working on a homemade notebook of Strathmore 400 toned tan paper to get those beautiful mid-tones. and make the white really pop.

If you’d like to make your own sketchbooks, I did a lesson on that back in March:

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