Butterflies at the Museum

For one of my last drawing classes, we went to the Museum of Natural History. Our assignment was (as always) draw loads, but in addition to the usual draw, draw, draw, we had to create a promotional postcard for the museum using one of our drawings.

I actually had a really great drawing day and came out with a bunch of things I liked, but halfway through a drawing of some ducks, a security guard came up to me and asked if I wanted to check out the butterfly conservatory. Apparently he'd found a ticket on the floor that needed to be used within the next fifteen minutes. I hastily agreed and headed to the conservatory.

For those of you who don't know, when I was a little girl, I had two "pet" butterflies; they made an appearance in our backyard every summer, and provided you were patient enough, they landed on any outstretched hand our arm.

It was an easy decision... I designed my postcard around the drawings I did at the conservatory.

Thesis Interlude

Hallooo blog-readers. Thesis show prep is in full swing; we're actually starting to hang the show today. (Sneaky peaks to come.) But it's been a while since I posted any art, so I thought I'd interrupt the regularly scheduled thesis-related whatnot to post some images I did in my drawing on location class. Last Friday we went up to Kykuit, the old Rockefeller estate on the Hudson. It was beautiful and a much needed trip outside of the city. While I love New York, it was wonderful to take a break from thesis-crazy and abandon the concrete jungle for birds and flowers.

The estate is amazing, but my favorite bits were the details... lots of wrought iron and fountains and gargoyles...

Scratchboard Fun!

Heya everyone,

Just a quick post of a piece I did a couple of weeks ago. In drawing class, we played around with scratchboard, and the assignment was for each of us to do a portrait of another student. I did a portrait of my friend Dasha, a firstyear in the program, a fellow aspiring picture book artist, and a super talented lady.

Dasha

I inverted the image just to see what would happen.

Grand Central Extended

For my drawing on location class, we had an extended project to pick a city block and do a series of nine drawings - three drawings in each of three locations on the block. I had originally chosen to draw uptown in my old neighborhood, but I had a really hard time in all of the locations and ended up despising all of the work that I did.

I had so much fun drawing at Grand Central a couple of weeks ago that I decided to go back and use it as my location. I divided up the station into three separate parts - the main terminal, the dining concourse, and the holiday market. While there, I did a bit of experimenting playing with different pens, but I'm pretty satisfied with the pieces I came out with.

Main Terminal

Dining Concourse

Holiday Market

Grand Central Drawings

On Friday, we went to the main terminal of Grand Central station for my on location drawing class. The in-process drawings were featured on GCT's facebook page! Woot!

conte crayon:

marker

Drawing Class

Hope everyone out there had a good Thanksgiving.

November has sped by in a haze of sneezing and coughing. I spent about half of the month sick and the remainder in front of the computer working on actionscript for the digital version of my thesis. More about that another day...

Today, however, I wanted to post a couple of images from my drawing class. Every Friday, I have five hours of drawing, either on location around the city or in the studio with live models. It's a great class, and it's been an opportunity for loads of experimentation.

Our on location days have included trips to Governor's Island, 50 stories up in a building overlooking the World Trade Center site, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, Gleason's Boxing Gym... it's been amazing. Here are some highlights:

My classmates looking down out over the city -

Drawing the Woolworth building -

Skyline (looking North) -

Word Trade Center site -

Drawing from the South side of the building -

After such a detailed drawing, I wanted to do something looser... quick ink drawing of my classmates and the interior of the space -

Unfinished drawing, Woolworth building -

Patrick Dougherty sculptures at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden (If you haven't seen them yet, check them out! They're amazing... he also did an installation at Smith during my first year.) -

Erin drawing

Left-handed drawing to warm up... my pen ran out of ink halfway through -

Drawings of the sculpture -

Detail page from the cactus room in the greenhouse -

Back in the studio with three models. Warming up with charcoal -

Playing around with ink (unfinished) -

Tighter pencil drawing -