Natural History Art & Science Illustration
Me holding a peacock feather sketch with watercolor
I started a YouTube channel this spring to share sketching lessons, prompts, and ideas with you. The first one, sketching peacock feathers, is a great introduction to sketching from life and using watercolor. I’ve taught this a few times, but I think it works well for a middle school audience and up. Anyone is welcome to watch and participate.
Read moreSketchbook spread from the National Museum of Cambodia
I’m not the type of tourist who wants to see every museum that a place has to offer, but I do love to go and spend a couple of hours walking around an art or natural history museum. Often when going to a new museum there is so much to see that I get overwhelmed. One of my favorite ways to slow down and appreciate what’s in front of me (instead of worrying about trying to see everything) is to bring a sketchbook or journal and take some time for focused observation.
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My accordion sketchbook from Cambodia
While I was traveling in Vietnam and Cambodia I filled an accordion sketchbook, and I had quite a bit of fun doing it. Accordion sketchbooks are relatively cheap to buy, or are easy to make; they are portable, and provide a wealth of options for how to fill them. First I am going to show you how to make your own, then I’ll write a bit about how I filled mine while traveling.
Read moreCreating your own field guide or collection can be a great way to organize visual information. You also can be creative with it and don’t need to take it to a Sibley-level of perfection unless you want to. Here is an example of a collection of different tropical flowers I found while walking around Hoi An, Vietnam.
Read moreI’m leaving in a few days to travel to Vietnam and Cambodia (want to come with and share the experience? learn more here). Note that since I live in remote Alaska, it is going to take me a few days to get there. Before I leave, I wanted to write a post about what I’m bringing with me.
First of all, there is nothing wrong with keeping your sketch kit simple and affordable. A notebook with unlined paper and pen or pencil will suffice! Really lined paper would be fine too. However as a professional artist I have lots of art supplies, and I wanted to share a few of my favorites for taking on the go.
Read moreThis February I am traveling to Vietnam and Cambodia and I want to take you with me, via my sketchbook. I have cooked up some fun ways to share with you (learn more here), but I am also planning to write a ten-part blog series about my ideas for keeping a travel sketchbook.
Read moreIn the last year or so I’ve been changing up how I work. I’ve been taking more photographs when I travel, and spending more time working in my studio, working from photographs and specimens. Nevertheless field sketching has always been an important part of my practice, and remains so now.
I travelled a lot this summer so I mostly used my sketchbook to slow down and have a moment of reflection in a new place as well as to document the landscapes, plants, and other things I found. I thought it would be fun just to peek into the disorganized pages of my sketchbooks.
Read moreAs an artist it feels like table space is prime real estate, as I never have enough space to lay out supplies and work. It was a big step for us to get a new dining room table last week. We moved into the new cabin after Thanksgiving and now we have space for furniture. Actually it is still quite a work in progress but we are moving that direction. When we finish putting the tongue and groove up in the ceiling we can move the bed and will have even more space. Last year we lived in a 16' yurt and much of our activity centered around a little 2x2' camp table that we bought at REI for a rafting trip. Whenever I wanted to draw, I cleaned off the table and set up shop. One of the reasons why I've been working in my sketchbooks is because they are small and portable, and I've been limited by space. By next summer I am going to turn the yurt into a dedicated studio, but right now it is a transition zone, though it does have more table space.
Read moreI just got back from a trip to the north eastern United States to visit family. We decided to go in October so that we could get home to Alaska before winter set in too hard and so that we could catch some of the nice fall weather there. One of the places we went was my grandparents' cabin on a pond near Rangeley, Maine. This has always been a very special place to me.
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