Sketchbook Sundays: Thoreau and a Beaver

This week I had my kids finish a couple sketches I started, with interesting results.

The first was a sketch of Henry David Thoreau. I started it as an example for a student who wanted advice on drawing portraits. Thoreau was particularly on my mind since I recently watched a play about his night spent in prison for civil disobedience, and I've been re-reading passages in Walden. My youngest daughter basically made him up like a clown or perhaps this is a cross between Thoreau and Dr. Frank-N-Furter of Rocky Horror Picture Show fame. Either way it seems a fitting enough way as any to bring the ol' free-thinking Transcendentalist into the contemporary world.

The second sketch was also from something old and deceased - a decades-old taxidermy Beaver found at the Wagner Free Institute of Science. My older daughter seemed inspired by Care Bears, as the Beaver now has a colorful pair of hearts on his tummy.

There is no escape from pop culture. It consumes us.