The Fauna of Costa Rica

One of the fascinating aspects of our visit to Costa Rica was the multitude of animals, reptiles, amphibians and birds! We saw many, and my photos are limited by what I could capture, and what photos turned out OK.

Baby alligator sleeping with mouth open.

Baby alligator escaping the paparazi (a boat full of tourists with cameras!)

Adult alligator.

Iguanas

 

Coatimundi

Three-toed sloth.

Cormorant

Motmot

Yellow finch?

Hope you enjoyed this little walk through the rainforest :-)

The Flora of Costa Rica

It has been on our list for a while, and so this month we took a 10 day trip to Costa Rica. I knew the rain forest would be interesting, but imagine my delight when I saw these leaves, my very favorite among all the foliage I had the pleasure of seeing in this beautiful country. Look at all that texture!

If I crop and magnify this photo, I see lines that look almost like white stitching!!!!

Taking the aerial tram over and through the rain forest was a great way to see a variety of foliage. While we saw lots of wildlife, we seldom saw it while on a tram. Too much noise and commotion for the creatures that try to stay where it is safe.

Here are some wonderful complementary colour combinations. Why is red and green always the complementary pair in the rainforest?

Nothing like greenery lit from behind by the sun!

Sure looks like a fiddlehead to me!

Here it is up close.

A few interesting flowers were seen too. 

In my next post I'll be sharing photos of the creatures I met! In the mean time, I am back home and it is snowing!

New Florals

I've been busy finishing up a few projects. First of all, I've always planned to do a blue poppy. For that reason, and in order to test my "Sunkissed Poppy" pattern, below, I decided to try the pattern in blues. 

After everything but the centre of the poppy was built, I took a photograph, and printed it four times on one full sheet of photo paper. Then I got out my Prismacolour Artist Pencils to try different backgrounds and centres.  I settled on a dark blue background because I found that the chartreuse green competed for attention with the poppy. I knew I wanted orange (the complement of blue) somewhere in the centre of the poppy. 

In the end I decided on using orange for the largest piece of the centre. As you can see in the experiments above, I used dark blue artist pencil to mimic stitching on the orange. So I think the orange in the final version (below) will be toned down a bit once I stitch on the piece. I used 11 values of blue on this piece, from the very palest blue to a deep navy.

After that was finished, I decided to finish off this peony, that has been on my design wall for about a year and a half. I am hoping to offer some new floral patterns for my In Full Bloom class and will probably publish this pattern in the new year and have it for sale on my website.

In the mean time, my five day Dye Happy class starts at Wabi Sabi on Friday, January 9.  Additional dates are January 16, February 27, March 20 and April 10. Click on Dye Happy to be taken through a series of posts showing what we have done in previous classes. Email me at equehl@hotmail if you are interested in joining us.