Sea Change

I call this illustration Hungry Sharks.  I illustrated it after the gulf oil spill.  A hungry shark is not the kind of shark I want around.  It's just like the motto for my cat Hana.  "I like to keep her fat and happy"  I say that all the time.  There's less shenanigans that way!  

Sea is the theme for www.illustrationfriday.com

Do you see change in the air?  Are the seas cleaner?  Are the beaches spic and span? Well, they cleaned up most of the oil from that particular disaster.  But if you missed this former post about beaches in Belize....

I don't want the Belize tourism board to come after me. So before I tell you that some of the beaches in Belize are filled with garbage, I have to point out that this is where we stayed.  An enchanting private cabana on a beautiful beach.  Just a few feet from the waters edge.  Heaven right?  Well, sort of.  Don't get me wrong.  This cabana was one of the highlights of over 12 weeks in Central America.  Amazing.   

Sunrise outside our front door.  But...

The beaches are filled with plastic garbage!  At least on parts of the main land.  We stayed on the beach in Hopkins during our first trip to Belize.  I loved it.  But I vowed to start picking up plastic on my next trip.  And to turn lemons into lemonade I decided to do a little art project.  So when we arrived in Placencia, I started collecting on our very first beach stroll.  And as you can see I stuck to a specific color scheme.   It actually became kind of fun to discover so many different shapes,  mysterious containers and the not so mysterious.  

The first thing I did when I got home was select a canvas that fit all of my art (excuse me) garbage. I laid it all out in what I hoped was an interesting manner and took a photo.

Then I painted the canvas in a kind of rustic, textured and sandy tone.

click to enlarge

Then for the fun part.  I started gluing all the garbage onto the canvas.  And so far everything has stuck!  Please take a moment to look over all the different pieces of plastic.  My favorites are the curlers and the little rocket.  The phone and mirror are also pretty fun. 

Still sticking!

And for God's sake recycle!