New England Aquarium Studies

As I said last time, drawing stuffed animals at Harvard made me feel sick and sad and I desperately needed to draw living animals.  And so, while I was still in Boston, I headed down to the good old New England Aquarium.  Boy did I have more fun drawing there.  I think you can see it in the art, so without further ado:













I'd say I have a great affinity for Pinnipeds, yes?

"Next of Kin" and Harvard Museum of Natural History Studies

Speaking as an artist, I'm not sure if drawing stuffed animals can teach me anything meaningful anymore.

Let's back up.  I was back in Boston for a week last month and decided I might as well enjoy the local attractions.  I hadn't been to Harvard to draw in ages and I'd heard they had a new exhibit that was a must-see, so I headed over there.

That new exhibit, man.  It's called Next of Kin.  The HMNH is so *old* that many of its skeletal and taxidermy specimens are from severely endangered or even extinct animals.  Artist Christina Seely, working alongside The Canary Project, an organization of ecologically-minded scientist/artists, created an art installation using many of these specimens.  Combining sculpture, photography, and music (including the calls of extinct animals), it's a stunning and incredibly moving marriage of science and art.  It is indeed, to borrow a phrase, not to be missed.  You've got until June to catch it. 

Oh yeah, and a far, far more accurate title for it would be "You Will Need A Strong Drink And A Good Long Stare At The Wall After This One."

It managed to haunt my entire visit.

I felt *bad* walking among the taxidermy in a way that's hard to put into words.  I drew a lot, as you can see, but I felt bad about it.  Even weirdly complacent - these were, after all, living animals that had been killed and stuffed in "lifelike" poses just so people like me could come and study their propped-up pelts.  So I really don't know if dead animals have anything left to teach me.

Anyway, on that cheerful note, art!







I got home with a desperate need to see *living* animals.  And so a few days later...

The Dogs of DC

Recent family events brought me to Washington DC for a while.  I managed to carve out enough time to draw some of the animals there.  Here are all the cool dogs we met walking around the city:
















Next week, sketches from the National Zoo!

"Jungle Eagle" Sketches

It's a new year, and over at Flickr, I started the customary yearly Sketch of the Day folder.  These are the first drawings I uploaded to that folder.  I'd wanted to watch the "Nature" episode "Jungle Eagle", about a team of biologists who go through a lot to record the life-cycle of a family of Harpies in Venezuela, for years but I always managed to miss it.  Thankfully, it and a bunch of other episodes of "Nature" have appeared on Netflix Instant.

These are all ballpoint pens on recycled Sketchbook paper.  A warning to all Tyrannosaurs I draw from now on: this is going to be my modern-day model/inspiration for you.  That crest!!!

Reasons why you need Katrina Van Grouw's _The Unfeathered Bird_

It Fills a Massive, Obvious Gap in Your Animal Anatomy Library - Remember way, way back in 2009 when I reviewed Eliot Goldfinger's massive tome Animal Anatomy for Artists?  And how I was so stunned and disappointed that, for all the gorgeous and rigorously accurate studies of a wide variety of mammals, he only illustrated the internal structure of one bird?  And it was a domestic chicken?  If you were just as put off by that, The Unfeathered Bird is for you.

It Makes That One Chicken Look Embarrassing - Really embarrassing.  Van Grouw has rendered staggeringly beautiful studies of at least one species of every major clade of extant theropod you can imagine and a not-insignificant number of clades you can't, plus a couple of extinct species.  She even goes so far as to illustrate the often insane extremes of domestic ducks, chickens, and pigeons.

It's a Comparative Anatomy Book in the Truest Sense - Van Grouw has grouped different unrelated clades of birds via a long-antiquated system that rather arbitrarily bunched similar-looking birds (ie, all long-legged, long-necked birds) together regardless of actual relationships.  The arrangement of the book, I will admit, confused me at first, but it facilitates comparison between species adapted to similar lifestyles.  She does clarify, as much as she can, who is actually related to who in the body text. 

Man, You Think You Know Birds... - There are some crazy reveals in this book.  Whooping Cranes have a windpipe that loops around inside the keel of their breastbone, creating essentially a live French horn.  Screamers posses vicious, claw-like spikes on their wrists.  Toucan nostrils face backwards.  Swifts have xygodactyl feet, quite contrary to every other illustration.  And, of course, necks lie.

It's Just Gorgeous - Seriously.  I can't imagine the work involved in preparing a book of this scope.  The fact that it's a fabulous work of art is icing on the cake.


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Sketch of the Day! Had some visitors earlier this month.

A Salute to All Nations, but Mostly Links of Interest!

* - Well, first of all, Sciurumimus Sciurumimus Sciurumimus!!!

* - Witmer Lab made the Ghetie's Atlas of Avian Anatomy available as a big, giant PDF file!

* - Speaking of avian anatomy, I am suddenly in the market for a fairly expensive book.

* - Passport to Dreams wrote a very detailed history of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", its influence on Italian horror (!!!), and in particular the strange case of "Snow White's Scary Adventures".

* - Long-Forgotten also wrote about "Snow White's Scary Adventures" and its possible influences on the Haunted Mansion.

* - And while we are on the subject of "Snow White's Scary Adventures", here is a story that is at once deeply strange, utterly fascinating, and a genuine crowning moment of heartwarming.

* - If you need a drink after all those rides, Party Through the Parks recently redesigned sections of their website.

* - I recently discovered Tom Ruegger's blog "Cartooniacs".  Here, he shares the story of a not-too-well-thought-out promotion for "Animaniacs".

* - Tetrapod Zoology has just written a very long article on our old friend David Peters.

* - And speaking of TetZoo, after reading this, you will never think of "Turtle Power" the same way again...

* - Deep Sea News explains how the Cretaceous coastline impacts modern-day politics.

* - Muddy Colors shared some advice on creating a portfolio.

* - You can now watch every single episode of "Reading Rainbow" on YouTube.

* - Time for some weirdness.  This unsettling-in-a-way-that's-hard-to-put-into-words song poses a philosophical question that has never occurred to me.

* - Here's a fantastically animated short that shows how an oddly-named Pokemon move actually works (NSFW language).

* - io9 shared a list of genre films to watch out for in the coming years (including several animated films I had forgotten to list last weeks.)

* - And finally, here is a fine gallery of summery art!

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Sketch of the Day!

Here's an older study of a young Bald Eagle:

Yet more Sketching from "Nature"!

Drawings I did while watching the "Nature" episodes "Revealing the Leopards", "A Lemur's Tale", and "Born Wild',  You know the drill by now. :)

More Sketching From "Nature"

A few months ago, I discussed sketching animals in nature documentaries.  I'm back with more sketches from several different episodes of "Nature".

It should be noted that this new hobby of mine is both rewarding and kind of frustrating.  It is frustrating when I check my DVR and get to say, "Oh joy!  An episode about bears/wolves/lions/apes/penguins/whales!  What a unique subject!"  (NOTE: Trish does not hate Charismatic Megafauna!  Still, three weeks in a row of episodes about whales?  Yeah...)  But it is awesome when I check my DVR and get to see an episode like "Birds of the Gods", which is about the Birds of Paradise.  How often do you get to see them in action or, more significantly, just hanging out and doing things less exotic birds have to do too?

So without further ado, here are sketches from "Cuba: The Accidental Eden"  "Survivors of the Firestorm" , "Wild Balkans" (drink when they mention J.R.R. Tolkien), "The River of No Return", and "Birds of the Gods":























Important Addendum: It should be noted that the quality of the streaming episodes on PBS' website is... not good.  I mean it's good *enough*, but not if you want to pause the show to do a more detailed study.  Something to keep in mind.

"My Life as a Turkey" Sketches

So the other night I technically sketched some live animals in my living room. The animals in question were in the excellent "Nature" episode "My Life as a Turkey". Yep, today we're briefly discussing the act of sketching from television.

"Now wait, Trish. I know you've gone on and on about how you need to sketch animals from life whenever the opportunity presents itself, but isn't sketching from a documentary cheating?" Well... that's up to you. The fact is, some people might not have a decent zoo or natural history museum near them, and it's absurdly difficult to find good motion and/or anatomical reference on certain species. Since my heart belongs to winged theropods, an entire documentary about wild turkeys and their life cycle was too good an opportunity to pass up.  I apologize if the notes are a little hard to read, but I originally wasn't planning on sharing these here. The first picture has one note that's kind of important though:



In the bottom-right of this page I have some notes on feather tracts. Note that the spine is essentially bare. A little while ago on Twitter, Aaron Diaz of "Dresden Codak" expressed his annoyance at artists drawing known species of feathered theropods with a handfull of quills running down the spine and calling it a day. Since he's mentioned that, I'm seeing that everywhere. And as you can plainly see, it's physically impossible. Go figure.

I also don't know what's up with that one kid in the beginning of "Jurassic Park". A six-foot version of one of these things would be horrifying.









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A Few Links of Interest:

* I want to see how many people who don't know much about animation I can convince this was an actual 80's cartoon.

* Speaking of 80's cartoons, check out Comics Alliances' rundown of the craziest episodes of "Jem".

* These quilled paper illustrations are amazing and kind of insane.

* Topless Robot has a great primer on Douglas Adams' work.

* There is apparently a football game happening this weekend and I have reason to be emotionally invested in it as the Patriots are involved. Eh. Let's all watch this collection of remarkably ill-conceived halftime shows instead. So many weird Disney cross-promotions...

* More importantly, the Annie Awards are tomorrow night, and Cartoon Brew will be streaming them at 10:00 PM EST!

More AA4A books?

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.

More AA4A books? Well, why not? Especially when you can get Knight and Hultgren for about $20.00 together at Amazon.
I suspected earlier that if anyone was going to cover non-mammals in an AA4A book, paleoart legend Charles R. Knight was the one to do it. I was right. Sort of.

He has a chapter on birds, which is very nice. He has shorter chapters on other animals. There's lots of information here... but not many illustrations.

This is all you get for reptile anatomy. And it's fairly typical for the book. Instead of diagrams and illustrations, you get loads and loads of text:

It is a bit of a disappointment, although the drawings are nice. I should note something about the text, and this has hit me in the Calderon book too (which I read more of recently): The text is very dated. I don't just mean "no longer scientifically accurate" dated but also "antiquated language that may throw you off" dated. Take a shot when Knight calls some rather innocuous animal or other a "brute" and/or "dumb animal". (It took me a while but I think I finally figured out that the old phrase "dumb animal" doesn't mean "not as smart as a human" but instead means "can't talk like a human". The reader is invited to cringe along with me at the unfortunate implications.)
So what's the book that came in the same box got to bring to the table? I've never even heard of Ken Hultgren. He's probably just going to cover horses again and...

Woah...

Well, he'll probably just do another chapter on dogs, right?

Dude...

OK, if you haven't gathered by now, this book blew me away. He does not discuss the nuts and bolts of anatomy at all, really. But by the end, you don't care. The things you will learn about action and animation more than make up for it. I highly recommend it.