Our final stop of the evening was back on the Museum's ground floor. The corridor seemed hardly a destination at all, tucked next to the staff-only research wings — well away from the main galleries.
But there, in the old-world display cases, we came upon the Birds of DC collection.
Here, I found my crows.
I sketched them quickly, using charcoal on paper I'd prepared with brayer and paint.
This was my final drawing from the after-hours evening of drawing at the Natural History Museum in Washington, DC.
More about this is below. But first —
In the Light of Day
The following day (Saturday), I returned to the Island with a few of my museum drawings in hand. The crows from the Birds of DC collection screamed the loudest — Finish me! Finish me!
It is one of the messiest drawings. What have I got? The left bird is working, but the top bird isn't. Figure out the value structure ASAP. Be willing to edit to find your main point.
Let's get into it.
Obliteration: As a rule, three subjects are better than two, but the top bird is hopeless. Erase. He barely shows through now, and I'm betting this abstraction will help me find what I want here. Perhaps make something of him in his ghostly state later.
Color choices: Don’t agonize over it. Select the same colors used for The Song of the Crow book cover [Meet Me in the Sky.]
Structure & Texture: What background structure is implied? What shows through?
After Dark
My Smithsonian membership was finally paying off — big time.
My calendar entry for Friday, October 25, at 7:30 pm read, "Drawing After Hours (Smithsonian Associates). Natural History Museum, entrance on Constitution Avenue and 10th.” A members-only session, with — I immediately imagined — the promise of having the museum all to ourselves.
Not exactly the way it worked out. A Smithsonian Sleepover was just getting underway, with kids eight to twelve in pajamas and Halloween costumes swarming the African Bush Elephant under the four-story rotunda. Charming, yes, but not exactly Ben Stiller’s Night at the Museum when the lights go down.
The first stop of our Drawing After Hours was the Moai statue from Easter Island on the ground floor. Warm-up sketching with the class pencils and drawing pads ensued. (My drawing looked uncomfortably like George Washington.)
Then, to our next stop — the Ocean Hall on the first floor. After a short lesson on mark-making with pencils (stippling anyone?), we had fifteen minutes to draw something that caught our fancy. The scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini, Phylum Chordata) in the large vial caught mine.
And then we were off again — this time to the Mammals Hall, where taxidermied animals were set out in natural and dynamic poses. I spent my twenty minutes drawing a lunging lioness. Gloriously, no eight to twelve year olds came between me and the lioness, a departure from this Museum's usual (and delightful) experience [Mammals in Museums].
By this time, however, I was cursing at the pencils and the small drawing pad. Too fussy. And all this standing around — why didn’t I bring my stool?
I finished up in the Mammals Hall, jamming the pencils into my backpack and pulling out a stick of charcoal, a couple of Nupastels, and the paper I’d prepared using brayer and paint.
Let’s see how the next drawings go with these.
We were on the move once again — to the Garden Lounge on the second floor. Quietly tucked out of reach of the museum’s sleep-over guests, my colleagues were delighted with the cycads, ferns, bromeliads, and orchids.
I break away to plant myself in front of the one oddball exhibit — an artistic rendering of Lucy, the 3.18 million-year-old hominid.
“Instead of a stone, the hairy hominin holds a smartphone and is mugging for a selfie. . . . The display also serves as a teaser of the museum’s upcoming exhibition, Cellphone: Unseen Connections."
Drawing Lucy — now, that was fun.
Our final stop of the evening was back on the Museum's ground floor. The corridor seemed hardly a destination at all, tucked next to the staff-only research wings — well away from the main galleries.
But there, in the old-world display cases, we came upon the Birds of DC collection.
Here, I found my crows.
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