American Museum of Natural History - Styracosaurus

I'm having so much fun doing these.

Having flashbacks of Smithsonian collection dinosaur models that I would feverishly horde.

The blue background is painted with an Azurite watercolor. There is a slight patterning to the surface that is fascinating me. Although its actually pretty mild.

This fossil within a foam or plaster mold. You can see it here at the museums official site.  So it made me wonder how to resolve the surrounding areas of the painting.

I like what I did although it leads me so question the white boarders of the page.  I actually am thinking of really defining the boarders so they look like a comic boarder.  Its a debating I'm activating thinking about currently.   I may have to try and experiment or two.

American Museum of Natural History - Stegosaurus

Stegosaurus, Watercolor on Paper, 9"x12"

So I realized something as I was doing copies of things at the MET. I could be doing the skeletons over at the American Museum of Natural History. The Next day I was there. Throughout the week I have been working on these watercolors.

Daniel Smith makes a line of watercolors that use semiprecious stones as pigments. I have been fascinated by them as they dry with an uneven/semi patterned finish to them.  So I have been slowly collecting and using various tubes of them. It kind of scratched that itch of a dorky kid who grew up with a rock collection.

The dark purple in this painting is an Amathyst pigment. I was surprised that when it dried it had a sparkly finish to it; like I sprinkled glitter on the painting as it was drying.  I was doing this with a two color complement in mind so the amethyst paint was in the entirety of the stegosaurus, almost all the yellows were darkened with the purple amethyst paint.

I was actually kind of horrified looking at it on my wall.  It looked really silly but as I looked at it a bit more it began to grow on me.  So I decided to do a few more in this purple/yellow method Making a series of sparkly dinosaurs.

I'm kind of on a roll with these paintings my end goal is to do 10 of these dinosaur watercolors before I head back to Hawaii for the summer.

Drawing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art -

2016-05-19 Apkallu, Ink on Paper, 9"x12"

 So the school's commencement ceremony is today, and I decided to spend the morning drawing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I wanted to do a couple copies of the relief sculptures in the Ancient Near Eastern Art section.

This is an Eagle-Headed Apkallu. I just spent a few minutes on wikipedia looking up information about them. They seem to be analogous to angels or demigods.

My interest in the relief was completely Aethetic. Despite the stylization of the figure: the very strong definition of the muscles and the rigid pose of the figure. There is a lot of movement and life in the figure.  Personally I think it has a lot to do with the repeated shapes and the organic lines that create the figure.  Spending the a few hours working on this has given me a lot of respect for the form creation.

There were also and number of details that just fascinated me.  The Apkallu has wristbands with what looks like wristwatches on them. The compass/sundial pattern mirrors some of the other patterns found throughout the relief.

I had to bolt out of the museum to get to the commencement ceremony for the class of 2016. It was a good trip to the MET.