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A lot of students from my oil painting classes are really interested in microscopic imagery and I was really tired of
them just pulling somebody else's stuff off the web. I wonder if there's any possibility in this university that
they can get their own microscopic images to do for these painting projects I assign and I came to Dr. Ownby who
very graciously suggested that she might be willing to collaborate with my class.
The most exciting part was working with the students on the microscope. We used the scanning electron microscope.
The most exciting part was how enthusiastic they were
and the other part was how appreciative they were. One of the students said I can't believe you're letting me
touch this piece of equipment and we said no we want you to touch it. The students actually
composed their own image, they focused it and they adjusted the magnification all by themselves.
There were quite a bit of plant samples from the bark of a tree to flower buds. There was one student had a
ginger root, and she used the root at a low magnification and then zoomed way up to
see the individual plant cells of the root and she used both of those in her painting.
We've got one student who's interested in comic books made a narrative project
somewhat like his drawings
that deals with his cat and her flees so they really run the gamut from being fairly literal to being
somewhat abstract
to being political.
I chose the butterfly wing.
I really like butterflies and the patterns on their wings. So I thought it would make for a really interesting
abstract form.
So that's what you
can see
in the background. I really like
bright colors.
Working with the scanning electron microscope was so much fun because we got to take our own pictures
and so I got to work with that.
Then taking those images
and putting it on canvas
was a blast.
Anything under the microscope is really unique.
It's not a flower or bird or something you'd say like here's a beautiful building, it's something you
can't see and it's bringing that
to your attention.
All of my inspiration for my senior show is
coming from this
lab right here so
we're really lucky that we have such a
helpful university.