Travel Journal: Drawing in the Museums of Chicago and Blind Contour Kentucky

While visiting Chicago with Mom and Sue, we ate a lot of great food, walked a bunch, and also enjoyed seeing the Field Museum and the Art Institute. I always try to draw when I visit museums and write down any interesting tidbits I come across. Here are a few of my doodles from the past week or two beginning with our trip to Murray, KY and going on with Mom & Sue to Chicago, IL and then Bowling Green, OH.

We’re taking Mom and Sue up to Detroit today, where they’ll catch a flight back to Atlanta. We were going to leave early this morning and check out the Detroit Institute for the Arts, but the storms last night kept us all up. Tornado sirens went off twice, so we went down to the basement and hung out for a while. The lightening was like a disco ball, sheets of rain, and the wind gusts were strong and couldn’t figure out which direction they were going. Apparently, it might have developed into a special kind of storm over 240 miles wide called a Derecho that can have wind gusts higher than a hurricane. What’s it followed by? “Oppressive heat.” Bringing the Louisiana weather wherever we go…

We’re having coffee now and plan to head up to Detroit shortly. We had a great time visiting with Mom and Sue!

See below for more sketchbook scans with associated notes or check out my recent Facebook Profile Pictures Series:

• 939 Drawings: My Facebook Friends’ Profile Pictures in Watercolor & Ink
• Part II of 939 Drawings: My Facebook Friends’ Profile Pictures in Watercolor & Ink
• Part III of 939 Drawings: Charles Beneke, You Asked for It
• Part IV of 939 Drawings: My Facebook Friends’ Profile Pictures in Watercolor & Ink
• Part V of 939 Drawings: My Facebook Friends’ Profile Pictures in Watercolor & Ink: #102-145

“Lascaux is like a theater: a story plays out on its walls.” –Denis Vialou

Like many others, I’ve long been inspired by the cave drawings from Lascaux, France. They had a great exhibit up at the Field Museum with small samples and large scale reproductions of the paintings as well as laser-cut 3-D topographic maps of the actual caverns with representations of the paintings within each corridor.

“From the entrance to the innermost depths of the cave we see before our very eyes the great book of the first mythologies…”

–Norbert Aujoulat, Prehistorian

Overheard at the Field Museum:
Kid: It’s a yak!
Parent: That’s pretty good!

Can you say ‘buffalo’?
Kid, screaming: It’s a YAK!
Parent: Okay, it’s a yak.

Vintage book I found at the bookstore coffee shop downtown. I’ll use it for my next sketchbook.

Blind contours I did during my Life Drawing class at the Summer Art Workshop at MSU.

Blind Contours and Caves of Lascaux drawings.

More museum doodles including studies from a great installation-based show by Kara Walker called “Rise Up Ye Mighty Race” with paintings, large charcoal drawings, and paper cutouts hung on dark gray walls. I love her work, and was excited to see this brand new show of work created this year.

We were only allowed to draw in pencil in the Art Institute.

My first attempts to draw mom this trip, sitting on a bench in the dinosaurs exhibit at the Field Museum.

After learning that our skeleton is made up of the mineral apatite at the Field Museum, I made up a dumb joke involving that fact. I’ll spare you.

This last detail was drawn while Blake and I were waiting for Mexican food at El Mariachi Loco in Murray, KY.

P.S.

 

Happy Birthday, Kelly Bozarth!