Illustrated blonde cow: a price and an alert for a threatened species | biodiversity



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She was one of those kids who draws compulsively, and unlike the majority, she did not stop doing it when she was 10 or 12 – and that, she says, is a good part of the secret of success. Rita Cortes de Matos often accompanied her father, an archaeologist, in her fieldwork and soon fell in love with archeological design. It is in this area that he made his first – and even two years ago – the only training in the region: an intensive summer course in the archaeological field of Mértola. It was not long before he could draw professionally, still in the field of archeology, but academic and professional life followed other roads. Not indefinitely: the 49-year-old Portuguese won this week the 6th edition of the International Awards for Scientific Illustration and Nature Illustraciencia, in the scientific category.

Rita Cortes has a physical education class, she has become a teacher. And with the status of a student, she then took a history course – then a master's degree in history of discoveries. The sketchbook has become empty over the years. There is something 15 left the capital for Beja, became a full-time mother. And in Alentejo has recovered the coal pencil. One of the organizers of the Beja Comics Festival, with illustrators Paulo Monteiro and Susa Monteiro, illustrated three children's books, gave substance to the Urban Sketchers of Beja. "It's a different course," I smile summing up the long resume of P3, which is still recovering from the "unexpected" price that I received this Tuesday. "Being in the top 40 was fantastic, I competed without believing I could win," he said.

The adventure of scientific illustration began two years ago, when, giving shape to an old passion of drawing plants and insects, decided to register at a scientific design course at the University of Lisbon. "In this category, Pedro Salgado (laureate of the same prize in the previous edition).

In search of an" original theme "for the Illustraciencia, Rita Cortés, 49, has crossed the cow had never met with life.He sought the help of Vacaloura.pt – a project coordinated by the Bioliving Association in partnership with the Wildlife Unit of the Department of Biology of the University of Aveiro, with the Portuguese Society of Entomology and the Institute of Conservation of Nature and Forests – and with the

"I went to their references I have started my investigation, "he said.Through the academic and research path, the formation of Rita Cortés for this research was great.He read dozens of documents, seen thousands of photographs, realized the cycle of life of the blonde cow, looked at the antennas, the legs, all the details.

To finish the winning illustration, Rita Cortes spent about a month and a half ("and because there was a delay, it had not taken longer", he says ), the pencil under [película de] polyester, a kind of vegetable paper that gives a lot of sharpness "to the image, and colored numerically. In the scientific illustration, he points out, the idea is not to draw a beetle, it is to get a picture of what can be "the representative of all beetles ". And in this case, he may even become the icon of this animal "endangered by the disappearance of his habitat ."

Drawing, says Rita Cortes, "is not a question of path". Back to childhood? "If you look at my kids' drawings, they are no better or worse than the drawings of other kids," he says. "The only difference is that I did not stop drawing," reveals how to give a formula.

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