Deepa Rao

I designed our entire wedding invitation suite, including custom watercolor, papercutting, envelope design, personalized logo, velum cover, invitation text, silk bow embellishment, and luckily found complementary stamps.

This process involved several drafts, color palette mixing, vector graphic design, paper texture matching for the various prints, and a learning curve to make a custom design and use it with the Cricut machine.

A special thanks to my husband Robert, who is quite the artist himself, for helping draft sketches of the flora and quails for the design. Photos by Santiago Almada.

Watercolors of textbook microbes (eukaryote, prokaryote, and virus) in an abstract interstitial space (or sea).

Charcoal is a straightforward yet complex medium that can be used to create depth in drawings. Inevitably, my fingertips become soot-black as I work the charcoal into the nooks of textured paper. It’s an involved process and I enjoy losing myself in the layers of charcoal.

The various forms of ice encountered in Antarctica. Ice is an important habitat for microscopic plants and animals to the iconic birds, seals, fish, and whales of Antarctica. As global climate warms, we stand to lose these dynamic and vital icescapes.

Watercolors using washes, glazes, blooms, granulating pigments, and sea salt for texture.

Hummingbirds of Costa Rica. Photography from personal travel.

Violet Saberwing (Campylopterus hemileucurus)
Black-bellied Hummingbird (Eupheruas nigriventris)
Green Violet-Ear Hummingbird (Colibri thalassinus)
Bronze-tailed Plumeater (Chalybura urochrysia)
Brown Violet-Ear (Colibri delphinae)
Stripe-throated Hermit (Phaethornis longuemareus)
Purple-Throated Mountain Gem (Lampornis cablaema)
Green-Crowned Brilliant Hummingbird (Heliodoxa jacula)

Twilight after a summer of perpetual sun in Antarctica. There are few things more spectacular than an evening of twilight casting pink and purple glows on Emperor penguins and sculptural sea ice and icebergs.

Photos taken in February 2018 while aboard the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer in Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica.

Crab eater seals. Weddell seals.

Photos of the MIT campus.

12.30.2018

As we transited through the Amundsen Sea, we encountered a white out region in the middle of the ocean. A cool, dense, white mist enveloped the ship and for a few minutes there was extremely limited visibility.