MOS Week: Sketches from "Reptiles: the Beautiful and the Deadly"

Well, I didn't quite fill a Sketchbook during this visit, and I didn't have any opportunities to do long studies. The museum gets very crowded over winter break (PROTIP: Avoid the Museum of Science over school vacations. I feel like, after five hours, I came home with everything school teachers build up an immunity to over the course of five years.)

But I did do a lot of sketches on this visit to the wonderful Museum of Science. It was well worth going, because as I have said many times before, there is no substitute for sketching a living, breathing, eating, pooping animal. Especially if that animal is one that usually sits very still:



A beautiful Green Tree Python and an unconventionally adorable Gila Monster. This is exactly how I'd be spending my day if I lived in a tree.



The Veiled Chameleon was surprisingly frisky. Turns out they have a particularly hilarious way of walking on the ground, which I was struggling to sketch.





And here's the star of the show. A handsome Water Monitor who was incredibly spry. As you can see, I never got a chance to do a long study of him - but I did get some awesome action poses.

This traveling exhibit was created by Clyde Peeling's Reptiland, which is in Allenwood, PA. I may have to visit their dedicated reptile zoo some day, if only to add this to my collection.

And since you love it, and I love it, here are

Hilarious And/Or Sad Things Overheard While Sketching!

A Downright Obnoxious Number of People: "Oh, I'm SO freaked out here; I HATE snakes!" ("WTF, why did you even come into this room full of snakes? It isn't like there wasn't informed consent going in," I wanted to ask, but I was too polite.)

Crazy Lady: "Oh crap! Now I really don't want to go to Africa, LOL! It'd be SO easy to step on a Gaboon Viper!" (I am hoping this woman re-evaluates her priorities [She's just afraid of the snakes? Ffft!] if she ever goes to Africa. Which is, incidentally, a pretty effing big continent. Imagine somebody seeing the Cottonmouth and vowing to stay away from North America. Yeah.)

Even Crazier Lady: "Oh, he looks so SAD! And he's in the aquarium all alone! Mr. Reptiland attendant guy, does this poor creature ever get lonely?" (Said attendant actually gave her a straight answer, but I would have had to say, "Gee, I don't know. I will ask him. Hey Mr. Giant Alligator Snapping Turtle Who Is, All Things Considered, The Scariest Nonhuman In The Room And No, I Am Not Forgetting The Nagini-From-Harry-Potter-Inspiring Gaboon Viper, are you lonely?")

Multiple People: "Are they real/awake/alive?" (*Head-desk*)