Dinosaur Class at the UCMP

This past weekend, I attended a special "short course" at the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley. This was basically a day-long program of presentations on recent dinosaur research, so basically the most awesome school day ever! Naturally I took notes; any scientific or terminology errors are entirely my fault.

So we end on a mystery, and the dino-romance continues! On the way out I stopped to sketch some Triceratops skulls in the museum library. I think I like the exploded diagram approach...

New York, New York

My wife and I made a quick visit to New York City back in January, which involved a lot of museum-going. Some highlights...

January 18, 2017: The American Museum of Natural History. The refurbished dioramas were incredible, but I only had a couple of hours to draw, so all you're getting is fossils.

 

 

 

 

 

  

January 20, 2017: We walked the Highline, an abandoned freight railway that's been converted into a lovely elevated public park, then made our way over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There were a bunch of nice folks from the 92nd Street Y sketching in a sculpture court, but that armor collection was calling to me...

 

January 21, 2017: And here are a few from the post-inauguration Women's March in New York. We watched for a bit on Fifth Avenue, got an aerial view from the Rockefeller Center, then staked out the finish line at Trump Tower.

 

January 22, 2017: To wrap things up, we finally left Manhattan and visited the Bronx Zoo. Here's a sampling of the fraction of the zoo we were able to explore...

 

 

 

 

 

SF Zoo: The Mega Catchup Part 2

And now to finish clearing out my backlog of animal drawings from Bay Area establishments! Here's the last four months' worth of San Francisco Zoo sketching.

October 31, 2016: For Halloween, I went to the zoo with Sarah Barrie Fenton and her animation students. My theme this time was bugs bugs bugs, whether giant sculptures, pinned specimens, or living cuties.

November 5, 2016: This time I tried to complete Sarah's scavenger hunt, although I didn't get very far - I kept getting distracted by critters that weren't on the list, or (in at least one case) weren't even supposed to be at the zoo.

 

 

 

 

January 5, 2017: National Bird Day! Instead of exotic avians, I ended up making close studies of ducks and turkeys. Plus a completely bizarre arachnid, and a speed round of monochrome critters...

 

 

 

March 1, 2017: Another group outing with Emma Burns and Ian Grabinski. This time, less fancy painting, and more structural studies of bears and sea lions and such. Plus a rare sloth action sequence and the surprising Best Of The Day!

 

 

 

 

 

At the Academy of Sciences

Since I live virtually next door to the California Academy of Sciences, I've been visiting it pretty often, even if it's just to admire Claude the albino alligator.

August 26, 2016: Here's ace nature illustrator Terri Nelson drawing Antarctic isopods in the Academy lab. Plus a couple quick taxidermy studies from the Naturalist Center, because I'm obsessed with bird feet...

 

 

 October 1, 2016: A quick round of African taxidermy to warm up for the Safari West fundraiser drawings.

 December 21, 2016: An emergency one-hour trip to admire the caribou and stoke my penguin obsession!

 

February 19, 2017: Another research expedition. I'm sculpting Claude for a class, so I needed to study his scale patterns. But there are always a lot of other distractions!