Hi all! This week’s page is inspired by some of the displays featured in Michigan’s Museum of Natural History. The sketch on the top is of a T-Rex skull, and the one on the bottom is of a mastodon skeleton. I rarely take the time to add line art to my sketchbook sketches, but looking at a fully polished ballpoint pen sketch is always so satisfying. In hindsight, I think that I could have done more with the crosshatching to really build up the contrast, but I am still pleased with the final page.
If you haven’t taken the time to explore the Natural History Museum yet, I highly, highly recommend it! The cafe lobby and halls make for great study spots, and the exhibits themselves are very interesting- even if you aren’t a big history nerd : )
With it being exam season, this week I’ve drawn a little point-of-view sketch inspired by all of the late-night study sessions I’ve been having in my dorm lately. I’ve always enjoyed doing point-of-view sketches; even though the perspective in this one is quite unrealistic, these sketches offer a great opportunity to practice drawing people and characters interacting with their surroundings instead of my typical drawings of characters existing in front of their environment. Overall, I really did enjoy this sketch and I’m happy with the result : )
One of the biggest draws to Ann Arbor is the food- the city is home to hundreds of restaurants and is a huge center for culinary diversity. This week, a few friends and I decided to try a restaurant that none of us had been to before. We headed to the south side of campus and wandered briefly before deciding on Lan City Noodle Bar. The restaurant had very modern decor, and two of the walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling windows that let in abundant natural sunlight, both of which made for a very bright and serene environment. My friends and I all ordered different dishes (similar to the one I drew below) and we enjoyed taste-testing all of them and comparing flavors! This was my first time trying a new, non-chain restaurant since I moved to Ann Arbor a few months ago, and I’m really looking forward to trying more local restaurants throughout the rest of the school year! It’s a very fun break from doordash and dining halls : )
Hello! The past few weeks have been full of traveling for me, so this spread was drawn in the car. It’s a synthesis of some of the most notable changes and symbols that I associate with the month of October: falling leaves, warmer clothes, pumpkin spice lattes (although I’ve never actually had one .ᴖ.), wool hats, digital cameras/retro technology, and pumpkin carving! Dressing in layers and wearing puffy coats is one of my favorite parts of this time of year, and I’m really enjoying meandering through campus as the leaves change and fall.
Hi everyone! Welcome to the first post in my blog: A Side of Sketching! Each Monday, I will share a page or two from my current sketchbook, along with some explanation as to what inspired the sketches or where I was while I created them. I love exploring new places and experiencing new things, so many of my sketches will revolve around that. As a college student, I also take inspiration from campus events and the more mundane aspects of student life. So, whether it be trying a new restaurant, going to a hockey game, or having a late-night study session in the dorms, my sketches will provide a glimpse into my life as a college student!
A little bit about me: I’m currently a freshman at the University of Michigan! I have been creating art since I was young, and have experimented with many different mediums. Usually, I tend to gravitate towards acrylic painting and pencil sketching. When I’m not studying or making art, I enjoy hiking, yoga, listening to music, going to sporting events, and having spontaneous adventures around campus! : )
For this first post, I wanted to create a page that sums up a highlight of my school year so far, and I felt that a page inspired by Saturday football games in the Big House was the best way to do that! I’m not a huge football fan, but I love the atmosphere on campus on game days- from the student section chants to the marching band performances and head-to-toe maize and blue outfits. I made this page while in the car on a road trip, so it is fairly simple. Still, I’m happy with how it turned out!
Hello, and welcome back to another week of Industrious Illustrating! This week’s update is a little brief, since I’m just recapping the trip I took to the La Brea Tar Pits Museum in Los Angeles over winter break. When I was there I took the opportunity to draw some of the fossil skeletons on display to better understand the construction of animal bodies, as I hadn’t seen some of these skeletons in real life before and I want to make more creature/scientific illustrations in the future.
Something interesting about my trip there was that there was a glass windowed viewing area to look at scientists at work cleaning fossils recovered from the “tar” pits (which are actually filled with liquid asphalt!), and there were a few informational plaques and displays sitting on the windowsill ranging from excavated bugs and microshells to stuffed animals of the animals most commonly found in La Brea. There was also a scientific illustrator on staff (who I assume drew the lovely drawings on some of the plaques) who was actively working on a scientific illustration on their iPad when I was visiting. I especially enjoyed the puppet of the now-deceased mountain lion P-35, as I’d just read about his story in the excellent book “Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet”.
All in all, my visit to the La Brea Tar Pits left me feeling more inspired and motivated than before. While I doubt I’ll pursue scientific illustration as a full-time career, I still want to explore different subject matter I find interesting as much as I can so that my work will be versatile and never grow stale or predictable. And of course, there’s no need to travel far from home to do so — even back in Ann Arbor there’s several resources such as the Natural History Museum, the Leslie Science & Nature Center, and the Creature Conservancy that all have skeletons or live animals on display to see and understand in real life. That’s all for this week! What would you guys like to see me discuss next week? Let me know!
