Saturday, February 21, 2009
Daily Sketches 7-8
I took a trip to the Iowa Historical Building today to draw some of the taxidermy. I some ideas in my head involving antlers and lots of critters so I thought I’d draw some animals that wouldn’t move. I didn’t remember the museum lighting being so low. It was extremely dim inside the exhibit making it hard to see much detail of many of the animals. I drew several sketches, but some weren’t blog worthy. I also took photos to look at later. They’re on Flickr, so if you’re interested you can compare them to my chicken-scratch drawings.
Since I was there, I also checked out a WWI exhibit (which had some nice illustrated posters) and an exhibit on restored Iowa paintings. The display on how paintings are restored was really interesting. There was supposed to be a video demonstration as well, but it didn’t work no matter how many times I pushed the button. The paintings themselves were eye-opening for me. Some of them were the typical boring portraits of people I’ve never heard of, and landscapes of non-descript locations. There were some that were strangely intriguing though. I may have to do a something with beards/mustaches. There’s something about the unruly growth of hair that is rebellious and slightly creepy. I was also amazed at the care and detail taken with most portraits’ faces, but many of the torsos/bodies lacked much detail and many seemed amateurish. There was one painting in particular of a man with shelves in the background that I really liked. The shelves were filled with taxidermied animals and at first glance you’d think the guy was Dr. Doolittle or Snow White with all her little friends. I thought about taking photos, but the flash might have damaged the art and my camera sucks in low lighting without it.
