The clouds were thick and gray on Tuesday, giving me enough cover that I decided it would be ok to go beach combing in the middle of the day. It was still steamy and hot but bearable without the sun beating down. I made my way to Lau Lau Beach where I’d had good luck finding lots of little white cowrie shells on my previous visits. Oh my, how things have changed in 6 years.
Instead of a beach littered with shells, I found myself picking a path through plain old litter. There was trash in the water, up on the beach, everywhere!

I kept walking down the beach and eventually came to an end of sorts where the beach gives way to coral rock. I glanced in the water and saw what I thought could be a broken sea urchin. Looking around, I saw some bits of broken plastic lying on the beach that looked remarkably similar. I decided I wouldn’t wade into the knee deep water unless I found some actual sea urchin pieces on the beach or in shallow water.
After surveying the area, I did indeed find a few urchin fragments, so I rolled up my shorts and waded in to check out the suspicious collection of shards. They were all pieces from sea urchins! I gathered them up and soon had a nice handful in a variety of shapes and colors and textures.

I had planned to cut up the green print for my next art project, but after I found the sea urchin pieces, my wheels started turning in a different direction, and I decided to create watercolor prints using a similar technique to that used when making palm prints.
I knew I would have to adjust the process slightly when working with the brittle sea urchin fragments.
I painted a little area of the sheet of watercolor paper with clear water. I then applied relatively saturated watercolor paint to the nobby side of the first sea urchin piece. I carefully placed the piece paint side down onto the wet paper. I used my finger to firmly push and roll the curved portion of sea urchin shell against the paper’s surface. The piece snapped right in half. Despite the now further fragmented shard, I continued printing in a horizontal direction across the paper, wetting the surface, painting the two pieces of shell, and pressing them down individually. I cautioned myself to be more careful with the next pieces.
I chose a new sea urchin piece and a new color for each subsequent horizontal band in the print (see below). All but one of the fragments broke into smaller pieces while I was making the print. So much for being more gentle. Truthfully, it would have been hard to get a good enough print from the delicate texture if I hadn’t used firm pressure, so I doubt the breakage could have been avoided. When all was said and done, I ended up with another byproduct painting that’s quite different than the pods piece that I added drawing to.

I took the photo of the splattered final byproduct with the pieces of sea urchin resting on the paper. The sea urchin shards are dry and porous. They sucked up the paint and are essentially dyed blue or green now. When I’m finished printing with them, I’ll have to find some way to showcase the actual pieces of shell.
When I started creating the sea urchin print, I was pretty much winging it in terms of composition and colors. I didn’t have a specific goal in mind at the start, but as the piece progressed, I decided to create a variety of textures as the color changed from blue to green.

I’m most happy with (from the top) the first and fourth bands of color/texture. The bottom row was kind of a disaster that I managed to salvage to some extent. The watercolor that I apply really has to be pretty thick. Then the wet paper can do the job of drawing out the paint to create an interesting texture. Using gouache instead of watercolor might the right consistency. For that last green band there was a lot more water in the paint, so when it met with the wet surface of the paper it bled like crazy. When I tried a drier surface, it still bled a lot, but a totally dry surface wouldn’t pick up much, if any of the paint.
I certainly haven’t perfected this sea urchin print technique, but I want to keep working with it. I really love the pattern and texture achieved in the 4th band. To create that unique result, I used the only shell fragment that had a more pronounced texture with larger nobs than all the other sea urchin pieces. The larger points held a good amount of the watercolor while keeping the flat surface of the shell away from the paper. It was the only piece that didn’t break too!