Sketching at Favorite Places

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There are so many wonderful things about keeping a sketchbook journal. The sketchbook becomes a container for all the personal, heartfelt things that bring you joy. It's a place to capture the simple, yet beautifully ordinary moments of life, and over time it becomes a rich, visual tapestry of the places you go and the things you do.

Once you start sketching it truly becomes a lifestyle, and you'll begin to collect lists of favorite places to go and sketch. One of those places for me in the natural history museum. The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History is only 30 minutes from my home and I go there very often to sketch.

I love sketching there because so many of the things I'm interested in (archaeology, paleontology,  birds and animals, Egyptian culture, Native American Culture ) are there and I can learn and explore until my heart's content. Unlike just going to a museum, and walking around and looking at things, sketching what you encounter brings the experience to a whole new, deeper, more interactive, more personal level. 

Sketching at museums gives me a way to awaken the wonder of my inner child, and feed my curiosity, and enjoy learning.

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This is the Florence Griswold Museum. It's an art museum which also has stunning gardens.  I do sketch inside art museums quite often which is another favorite sketching activity for me, but on this absolutely perfect summer day the gardens seemed the work of art to admire. Sitting in the shade looking out over a beautiful perennial border gave me the time to deeply and richly, absorb the energy, scents, colors and sounds of summer. All of it washed over me as my pen danced across the paper intuitively forming marks. Curley-ques, serpent like long lines, small dashes and circles all my own personal shorthand visual language for quickly capturing the look of the floral bounty all around me.  Splashes of warm and cool colors mimic the patters of sunlight and shadow dappled across the flowers. The straight lines of the building architecture and the sign post provide the perfect visual foil to the profusion of ruffles that make up the garden.

The sketching experience is such a soul nourishing one, as are all art making experiences when they come from your heart and are for you alone, to make you happy. 

Samurai Exhibit Again

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There's a lot of great stuff at the Samurai exhibit at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, CT

I went a few weeks ago and focused my sketching on Samurai armor and Buddhist statues.  yesterday, I returned for a second look and spent my time focusing on Noh Theater and woodblock prints. 

I used my Nomad Sketch Satchel which has taken a little getting used to but I like it for museums, zoos etc.  It's very helpful for sketching standing up and even for longer times sitting as you can angle it so you are not hunched over and working on your lap.  

I really enjoyed using the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen for the copy of the woodblock print. Right tool for the subject!  

More Museum Sketches

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 Canoptic jars from ancient Egypt at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History

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 Great Black Backed Gull, Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and gouache

Always love a trip to the museum to sketch. Satisfies so many of my interests, art, sketching, archaeology, ecology, ornithology, paleontology etc. All wrapped up in an enriching, enjoyable environment.

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 The falcon headed Egyptian deity Horus.

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 Common male eider duck. I don't think he's common at at!  He has such beautiful subtle colors, like the pale green on his head.

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 This was a second trip to the museum with the Connecticut Sketchers Group. Fabulous afternoon indulging my new fascination with bison.

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And what's a trip to the natural history museum without sketching some of the amazing dinos and extinct species!

Museum Sketching Day (again!)

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 Nothings beats a day of sketching with another sketcher for company! My good friend Roxanne Steed and I took a trip in to the American Museum of Natural History today to relax and indulge in a day of making art that's just for ourselves.

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Everything about a sketching trip is fun. I love the planning, what to take, which pens, which paints, which sketchbook etc. Then there's all the things that you learn particularly in a museum. The penguins were an easy first choice, and it was interesting learning that they live on an island off the coast of South America.  

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The Hall of North Coast Indians was something I only had time to walk through last time I was at the museum and I knew that I  definitely wanted to get back for sketching. We were fascinated by these huge totem poles and the incredible animal imagery on them.  The more we looked as we sketched, the more we saw.

When I'm sketching in a museum or zoo I like to use a pen with non-waterproof ink. That way I can create tonal washes quick and easy with my water brush. If there is time I can then add a bit of watercolor to liven things up a bit.  Yes, some of the ink will bleed into the watercolors but that has a way of one, unifying your colors and two seriously keeping you from overworking your application of watercolor, It's gotta be a quick simple wash and you have to leave some white areas which lends sparkle to a sketch.

Sketcing at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City

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I've sketched at our local natural history museum at Yale University many, many times but never at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. It's someting I've always wanted to do. After seeing Tommy Kane's brilliant sketch from the AMNH a few weeks ago, and buying a print from his Etsy Shop, (see the print I purchased HERE)  I knew that I'd have to make a trip there, and soon!!!

Just like the zoo I knew I would need to pack light.  Zoo trips and museum sketching days can be exhausting especially if you're not prepared mentally and packing a very light kit.  For me the museum was a 2+ hour drive into New York City. I went early on a Sunday morning to minimize the traffic situation. The museum has it's own parking deck so that's great, no need to walk half a mile just to get to the entrance.  The down side is that the museum is typically crowded on a Sunday, and it was. Really crowded by the afternoon.

With that in mind I knew that a sketching stool was out of the question. I would have to sit on seating that was already there or stand.  Most of the time I ended up standing. Comfortable clothes, and shoes are really helpful !  I  also packed a very light kit.  A mechanical pencil, a Pentel Stylo pen which has a cool kind of tip/nib kind of like a felt tip in a fountain pen nib with a little flex.  It makes a nice bold line but also is water soluble so you can soften and create tonal washes and combine it with watercolor, which is what I did. I like that because you can get a lot of volume and form to your sketches with just the tonal wash and then add just a smidge of watercolor to indicate the local color of things, and in a very short time your sketches come to life through value and color.  It's a good quick way to work and you get a lot of bang for the time spent.

The museum is ginormous...so how did I decide what to sketch???   This trip could have gone lots of different ways in terms of what I sketched. Here's how the day unfolded. We entered through the Hall of African Animals and I immediately knew that I wanted to sketch some of the more exotic ones, when else would I ever have the chance??  Then we proceeded to the Hall of African Peoples. As we wandered about I spotted the Masai man wearing the lion's mane headdress.  I was immediately drawn to it. What must it take to acquire an item like that, and what powerful symbolism is enacted by the one wearing it. Also, what a direct way to enter into the larger unity of living things. Many ancient and "primitive" peoples have rituals that entail wearing animal skins, helping them to tap into the spirit and essence of the creature.

Once that sketch was done, I began looking more closely at other African headdresses and ritual costumes. Fascinating. This was not something that I previously had,  any special interest in. But that first sketch opened me up to a whole new area of interest. Once the costume page was finished we took time to look at lots of other parts of the museum, have lunch and then I returned to the Hall of African Animals to complete the two page spread.

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We ended the day by viewing, what is probably the, most iconic installation in the museum, the blue whale.  Magnificent.  Then a nice long time in the gift shop before heading for dinner and the drive home.  I spent a lot of time figuring out the most direct and shortest way to get to the museum and wrote out the directions below the blue whale because I know I'll be going back!