One of the goals for my Girl Scout Gold Award project is to create 18 educational graphic panels to be printed out on high quality materials and set up along the three birding trails that I have envisioned.
So far, I have created 11 out of these 18 panels! These 11 panels focus on different types of birds that can be seen around the trails, which are located in Mt. Vernon, Texas. I am planning to create 7 more, which I will likely complete over the summer.
In each of these panels, I have drawn every picture by hand, then uploaded it into the computer to convert into a vector graphic. I researched each of these birds to create the text in each of the panels. These panels are in the color scheme of the Pure Hope Foundation, and with the help of my friends and family, I was able to design them to be beautiful.
As I created these panels, I was able to learn more about the process, seeing what worked and what did not. As I got better and better, I was able to improve my process to create higher quality artwork more and more efficiently.
I began my first panel, the Eastern Bluebird, just before school began in August. I contacted the Texas Bluebird Society about my project, and they agreed to review this panel. After making sure that it was factually correct, they allowed me to include “approved by the Texas Bluebird Society” in the star in the bottom left corner. They even liked my project so much that I was included in an article of their newsletter, the Texas Blues! 8/3/20 – 8/20/20As the second panel I created, I was still getting to know a lot of the tools in Adobe Illustrator, which is what I used to create them. However, I was getting into a groove! 8/13/20 – 8/24/20School was starting, so I started only having time to work on the panels over weekends. However, I still was able to finish this one quickly. 8/23/20 – 9/3/20For this panel, I got in contact with Mr. Cliff Shackelford, the chief ornithologist of the Texas Wildlife, and the author of Hummingbirds of Texas. He reviewed and approved my panel, and allowed me to include to include that in the bottom left corner star. 8/28/20 – 9/19/209/20/20 – 10/5/20I was hoping that I could get a drawing tablet as a gift over winter break, but because of its present necessity, I got it early! With the tablet, I was able to work much more efficiently, and the line quality of my pictures increased dramatically. 10/24/20 – 11/20/2011/21/20 – 11/29/20My grandparents, Bobby and Donny, own a lake with Wood Duck boxes on its banks. They check the boxes over the spring, and sometimes they find ducklings that were too weak to leave the box and were left behind by their mother and siblings. They take these ducklings and raise them themselves. One of these ducklings was named Toby, who is in the video linked to this panel by a QR code. 12/5/20 – 12/21/201/4/21 – 1/25/211/25/21 – 2/2/21As the final panel that I created before travelling to Mt. Vernon over spring break for an in-person progress report to the Pure Hope Foundation, it was a relief to finally finish! 2/8/21 – 2/29/21
