Monday, February 18, 2008

Natural History Museum Sketches

We went to the Natural History Museum the other day and sketched some animals who were kind enough to stand very still for us for extended periods of time. Unfortunately, there are significant portions of the museum that are closed for renovation, but there is still enough to keep one busy for a while if pausing to sketch. They have a great collection of birds, and they wound up being some of my favorite animals to draw. They have such beautiful shapes and are quite stunning simply as objects of design.





Friday, February 15, 2008

Best. Homework. Ever.

Homework can be a real drag, especially when it piles up the way it tends to at Art Center. But once in a while, you get an assignment where the instructor tells you to do pages of sketches of dinosaurs. Technically, the assignment was to draw dinosaurs and other animals, but he had me at "dinosuar."

The first image here is a compilation of several pages of quick, 1-2 minute thumbnail sketches:
We were then asked to pick one animal that we briefly studied and do a couple pages of research sketches. I chose the T-Rex because... well, it's the T-Rex. As part of my T-Rex research, I also studied eyes and scale patterns of modern lizards to help envision what the T-Rex may have looked like:
I then drew the T-Rex from my imagination, referring to my studies: After I finished this assignment, I found this awesome article, closely related to this assignment. Two new dinosaurs! Pretty cool...

Thursday, February 07, 2008

LA Arboretum Sketches

These are some observational sketches from the LA Arboretum. We went with the assignment to observe and document plants and animals from nature and then to redesign our own organisms based on our research. I was amazed by how strange and bizarre actual flora and fauna can be. Not so much the goose, but there are some weird plants out there.

For our redesign, we were assigned the topic of "A Children's Fantasy Garden." A lot of the plants we saw at the arboretum are kind of scary, with all sorts of spiky things protruding at eye level. So I just pushed that vague threat a little further into a more overt and even aggressive nature.