July has been a month of travel for me. First a weekend trip to Santa Cruz, then a road trip to LA, and finally a week long vacation in Hillsborough, Florida to stay on a beach with my family.

The family reunion has happened in the same place every summer since before I can remember: every year they reserves 2-3 cottages at the outlook of an inlet. On this outlook is a 130 ft tall lighthouse, 2 beaches, a dock, and no shortage of interesting beach accoutrements. This year, instead of hunting for interesting shells, I set my sights on coral. Coral is incredibly easy to find here. On the beach there is more coral than rocks, and a healthy variety of coral at that, so my suitcase was certainly heavier on the return flight. In total I brought back almost 20 pieces of the stuff. I’m still trying to identify the coral, but I’m sure most of it comes from the Florida Reef, which has it’s northern border around that same area.

Most of the coral seems to be round “brain coral.” There’s also smooth starlet coral, elliptical star coral, and a few that I’m still working on.While identifying each of the pieces I gathered, I learned a little about the variety and breadth of coral that’s out there, which left me with a special appreciation for the pieces that I managed to collect. When I found them, they were submerged in sand and water and nearly lost among hundreds of other coral chunks. I’m trying to find ways to show them off so that each piece can receive the full attention it deserves. For now, I’ve been using them as drawing exercises:

I’m trying to be scientific by drawing each piece in exacting detail, but that sort of detail takes quite a while. At some point, I will take some high detail photographs.