Showing posts with label field sketching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label field sketching. Show all posts

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Fun with Taxidermy

Had a nice visit to the La Sierra University World Museum of Natural History. It has all kinds of taxidermied animals; reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals. Many are very well done, not the weird shrivelly creatures you sometimes see (a lot were prepared by freeze-drying). But since the collection was still being worked on, a lot of animals didn't have labels.


We had some time alone inside to sketch. The guy manning the office came over to see what was going on after I made a bunch of noise ripping paper out of my sketchbook and rattling around my watercolor set. Later, a big bunch of people came in on some kind of campus tour. Since I was sitting on the floor, leaning on another display case, I was either in their way or they'd try to be sneaky about looking at what I was doing. On to the sketches!



The museum said it has the largest collection of Southeast Asian birds in the US. There were many colorful birds of unknown species. The ones I painted had labels: two hornbills (a man said about the Helmeted Hornbill "That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen") and a cuckoo. The coolest birds were up too high to see while sitting and I it's hard to stand and hold all my watercolor stuff. I was kind of lazy with my color mixing on these. It's fun to draw birds that are holding still!





There were strange groupings of mammals; armadillos, monkeys, civets, baby hoofed animals. The bushdog looked a little off, but I liked its curled tail and shocked expression. I think the little armadillo was a six-banded. The capybara looked kind of mad too.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

No Gnus is good Gnus


I went to the Getty. I drew a python killing a gnu.

I don't really like sketching paintings, because they don't really look too impressive as some pencil scribbles. But this one is a clay model, so it gave me a 3D form to wrap my head around. And look, my drawing is of the opposite side as the photo of this piece on the Getty website. Ooo, ah, oh! (Poppinfresh dough)

Saturday, September 09, 2006

What big horns you have!



I saw some Watusi cattle yesterday. Their horns are HUGE! And they were a pretty burgundy color with white speckles. One walked up to me; he had the usual cow expression, but I was scared he was going to poke my eye out!

I should've brought a bigger sketchbook. Once I drew the head I kept running out of room for the body.