Sketchbook Sunday: Birds at the Wagner

I first discovered the Wagner Free Institute for Science in 2005 while in grad school at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. I took an elective Animal Drawing and we went on a field trip to the Wagner to draw from its collection of skeletons, fossils, taxidermy, and other specimens. After graduate school I continued taking trips to the Wagner to draw, but I ceased the practice as my teaching work piled up and then I had my children.

Today I work for the Wagner as an artist/scientist-in-residence with their SNAP (Science Nature and Art in Philadelphia) program, which uses art to enrich the science curriculum of middle schoolers. In between meetings and visiting public school classrooms I have had the time and opportunity to go back to the Wagner and resume drawing from the collection. It's a joy to return to this practice and I hope to make it a habit.

Collabortive Dino Linos: Sunset Return

Linocut over watercolor (unique print) 

11.5" x 9" on 140 lb. watercolor paper 

This is the last of four collaborative dinosaur linocuts I've made with my daughters. The first three were posted here, here, and here. As with the third, this print is based on a drawing by my 4-year-old daughter Bebe. 

Clouds roll in, the moon sits high, and the air has begun to cool. Darkness is coming. 

Collaborative Dino Linos: A Perilous Valley

Linocut over watercolor (unique print) 

11.5" x 9" on 140 lb. watercolor paper 

This is the third collaborative dinosaur print I've made with my daughters. The first were posted here and here. They were both based on drawings by my older daughter. This print is based on a drawing by my younger, 4-year-old daughter Bebe. 

I walk, but unsteady, continuing to move forward, though the rising wall and turbulent atmosphere does not bode well for my future. 

Collaborative Dino Linos: Ailing

Linocut over watercolor (unique print) 

11.5" x 9" on 140 lb. watercolor paper 

This is the second collaborative dinosaur prints I've made with my daughters. The first was posted here. This print was based on a drawing by Lysi, my 7-year-old. 

The colors are pretty and playful, but everything here  makes us sick. 

Collaborative Dino Linos: Hitting the Wall

Linocut over watercolor (unique print) 

11.5" x 9" on 140 lb. watercolor paper

This is another collaboration with my 7 year old daughter. (The first can be seen here.) I've resumed work on the Nautilus and the Ammonite project and I decided I need some children's drawings of dinosaurs in the background of one of the double-page spreads. However, I'm also using the blocks to make some one-off finished works in their own right such as this. This is also building on what I started with these screen prints made last year.

For this piece I instructed Lysi to draw a T-Rex from a specific reference, and then I turned her drawing into a linocut. I did a watercolor painted background before printing. I'm working on a few of these, and with each I'm trying to not have strong expectations about the final product and frequently pause and with each decision carefully respond to what has already happened. In this case the drawing of the dinosaur struck me as rather emaciated, which drove me to give him a grey, flat, and empty environment and to leave the carved marks in front of his face that suggest he's walking into a wall, in the sense of being hungry and out of options.

Sketchbook Sunday: Students in Clark Park

For this week's installment of Sketchbook Sunday I've decided to feature sketches I did of my 3rd-5th grade students at the University City Arts League. Last week I had the students made small, bound sketchbooks and this week we took a walk to Clark Park and did some sketching outdoors. I intended to get a sketch of each of my 8 students, however I only captured a glimpse of 7 because one wouldn't stay in one spot for long enough for me to find him. As is probably obvious from these sketches, none of the kids stayed put in one place for very long. Ah, well, life is fleeting.

Deborah Anne Bowen's Jumping Fox

Deborah Anne Bowen has made a number of wonderful woodcuts of Berlin foxes (check on her art blog here), including an exquisite accordion book/wordless picture book titled Diary of a Viktoriapark Fox.

This pair of foxes isn't featured in that book, but it is my favorite of Bowen's fox prints. I adore the moment of tension just before the leaping friend lands on the unsuspecting sleeper. I love the warm playfulness of these fuzzy actors set against the stark and stoic background. It somehow seems wintry, without depicting any literal snow or other signs of the season (although it was created to be a New Year's card). I almost wanted to save posting about this print until winter, but I've been looking so much at Bowen's foxes, I simply had to feature this graceful print now. Maybe I long for winter. Maybe I just feel that the year is new because it is the start of the school year after a long, hot summer.