Udvar-Hazy Center

The National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall is great, but tends to be a bit too crowded and filled with toddlers sprinting around.  The NASM Udvar-Hazy Center out in Virginia on the other hand is a huge facility with some incredibly awesome aircraft on display, and a much calmer space to sketch about.

You could return there a dozen times and never be lacking for a new interesting, fascinating, and awe-inspiring subjects to sketch, from the Discovery shuttle, WWII planes, aircraft from the birth of flight and every era of flight you can imagine.

And the conservation facility shows a bit of the process involved in restoring and maintaining the amazing pieces at the museum.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

I had been interested in visiting F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre's resting place for some time, and finally found a good reason to as my sister told me their anniversary as coming up (the couple was married April 3rd 1920).  So the first weekend after we got ingredients together for some Gin Rickeys, drove out to Rockville, MD to a small church surrounded by commercial plazas and paid our respects.
We made a couple drinks for F. Scott and Zelda, but already there was a collection of pens, books, stones, flowers and coins left by other admirers with similar intentions.

Galata Morente

I'll add my Gaul too...

Ricardo pointed out to our sketchcrawl FB group that The Dying Gaul was on temporary loan to the NGA, and gathered a bunch of us to go sketch it.  While the crowd around the sculpture was deep, everyone found a decent unobstructed view or two to draw from. My only regret is that I didn't truly represent his wicked mustache and mullet.

It is pretty interesting how unaware people can be of themselves as the step directly in front of another person looking at the same artwork.  I don't mean just those of us sketching (though I will admit it didn't help) but people who will stand so close to the sculpture itself that the 30 visitors behind them can't see a thing. Whatever. At least no one knocked him over...

Elizabeth

As far as pop culture figures who make good mural subject, DC has a pretty good knack for picking them.  Marilyn Monroe, Duke Ellington, Chuck Brown, and Frederick Douglas among others.  Well, earlier this season the Dacha Beer Garden opened up with a pretty spectacular mural of Elizabeth Taylor keeping watch over their beer drinkers down below.

H St Festival

Inspired by Joel's sketches from last year, I checked out this year's H Street Festival. Food, weird cars, rollergirls, art and lots of people.  Sadly I missed an opportunity to try a faux-cronut, but otherwise a lot of fun.

I'm starting to enjoy putting sketches together in strip form.  It's taking me a little longer to plan out, put together, and sketch, but I'm diggin' it.

Small Press Expo

So Baltimore Comic-Con was fun, but the real action came a week later in DC (well, North Bethesda...) with the Small Press Expo. If you are into comics, or just art in general this was the place to find every indie or underground comic creator you wish you've heard of. This expo is one of my favorite times of the year- made apparent by how I spent way too much money on said art and comics. So as with Baltimore, I thought I would put together a page of SPX sketches in a way that seemed appropriate.

Baltimore Comic Con

I've been living in DC for some time now, but only in recent years have I started braving the Baltimore Comic Con.  Unlike a lot of pop culture conventions, Baltimore is straight up about Comic. Books. A lot of comic vendors, spandex, writers, artists & illustrators, spandex, kids, toy, t shirts, did I mention spandex? A whole lot of fun.  So I thought attempting a bunch of sketches on a single page might be appropriate considering the subject.

700 Delaware

Sometime late last year street artist Hense came to DC to work on a former church south of the Capitol area.  The project had some minor controversy over whether this was respectful to the history of this particular site, but nonetheless it's pretty awesome and fun to see up close.  [You can check out more about the project at Design Boom.]

I certainly couldn't sketch this without involving all these great marks and colors, so it took me a little while longer than usual to finish the drawing.  I sketched the basic structure and a little of the surroundings on site, but had to color it at home... after running to the art store for a few more markers...

Sketchcrawl #38. Pt 3.

And finally, here are three views of the Capitol building.


One of the many portable jumbotrons on the Mall.


Last Port-o-potty, I promise. I swear it's not an obsession.

Sketchcrawl #38. Pt 2.

The landscape of the National Mall changes quite a bit with the coming of the inauguration.  News trucks, t-shirt vendors, security, etc... Though not quite a Tardis, the Police box certainly caught my eye as an interesting addition to the surroundings.  And you can't miss the Port-o-potty's, and checking out CNN was just kind of fun.

Around the time we were sketching the CNN studio, a PBS photographer decided to tag along with us and take some pics of our group sketching.  I'm not sure if anything will come of it, but it was fun to get a little attention for the group.  And it was fun to talk to all the passerby's who took some interest in what we were all doing.  It was a fun day. Fun enough that I had to come back again the next day to sketch some more.

Sketchcrawl #38. Pt 1.

For this past weekend, we decided it would be timely to have our Sketchcrawl on the National Mall here in DC, as the Presidential Inauguration is happening shortly.  I got there a little early to get a sense of what was around, and there was plenty to see.  My first couple of sketches, as I waited for the other 'crawlers to arrive, aren't strictly Inauguration themed, but a couple of scenes of the Mall.

The East Wing of the National Gallery- in the midst of a face lift.


And a view of the Natural History Museum from Hirshhorn, across the Mall.

I'll post another batch in a moment or two...

Eastern Market

I meant to post this a while ago, but I'll blame the Holidays for getting in the way.
This is a drawing of Eastern Market I sketched for some other [very talented] artists I met at Artomatic this past summer.

Marilyn

The classic Woodley Park mural. Commissioned (in either 1968, or 1981) by Roi Barnard of Salon Roi, and painted by John Bailey. I thought it could use a little love in ink on paper.

22 Sketches of Artomatic

 

So, Artomatic has a tradition of anonymous (or semi-anonymous) individuals who leave gifts, poems or kind comments to participants;  the Benefactor, Brash, the Collector 2.0...

So, with that in mind, I thought that instead of making a regular "Top Ten" list or "Best of AOM" list, I'd try and make a sketch for my favorite displays of this year's show.  I didn't quite finish as many as I wanted, but I did get about 22 sketches done and distributed back to the artists who inspired them. The're not all stellar sketches, but I tried to do them quick, so lay off man.

No name, no email, no signature or website on it.  Just a small small (2" x 3 1/4" specifically) gesture to let them know they are among my favorites of this year.

Though it wouldn't take much to figure out I did them... (golly look, a blog post about it!)

Here's how they look as I put the sketches up in the artists' spaces.

Zofie Lang, Beth Farnstrom, Matt MacIntire, Stephanie Booth, Sean Hennessy, Rania Hassan, Robert W Kincheloe, Peter Gordon, David D'Orio, Megan Maher, Matthew Malone & Kurtis Ceppetelli, Mariko Iguchi, Jessica Murray, Brian Jerome Murphy, Greg Minah, Giant Japanese Monsters, Bad!, Mei Mei Chang, Marty Ittner, Kathryn Trillas, Erin Antognoli, Ellen Hill, & the DC Creepers (Tommy Corrigan & Eric Gordon).

In addition to these 22, I also loved what I saw from Missy Carr, Christopher Goodwin, G. Vollrath, Dominick Rabrun, Christopher Grady, Todd Gardner, Frederick Nunely, Jenny Walton, Annie Riker & Amy Keys, Joseph A Corcoran, Cory Orberndorfer, Sabrina Cabada, Jamie Gerhold, Nick Zimbro, Shambles Cross, Salvador Casco, Ray Allard, Liliane Bloom.

More pics after the jump!

Dusk of H St.

Smith Commons on H St commission the street artist Gaia to make this stunning mural on the side of their building. Pretty awesome. Had to draw it.

This got some other murals in town on my mind, so I am going to try and sketch a few more of them before I leave for the summer.

Waterfront SE

We intended to go into Nationals park to have our sketchcrawl during the ballgame, but had a hard time finding each other!  So when I finally ran into Matt we decided to stick to the waterfront and sketch a bit there.  I finished one sketch, but only got through a little of the other.

Columbia Heights Alley

So the original plan was to go to a couple of bookstores around the city and put prints of this sketch in the pages of as many copies of "The Art of Urban Sketching" as I could find. (Not an original idea, as fans of the Post Secret blog & books do this too with their anonymous confessions.) It turns out though that none of the bookstores actually had any copies on the shelves, so no-go on that idea. Instead I went back to the alley in Columbia Heights where I drew the original sketch and found some spots to give them away or hide them for people to find.

I found a couple of windshields to drop the envelopes.  Some that drove off before I got a picture of them,  of course not without a few funny looks as they picked up what I left for them.

When I felt like too many eyes where on me to put the last few envelopes on some windshields.  I found some bicycle baskets to drop them in.  A couple that also came and went before I got a picture off.

The original sketch

Sketchcrawl 34

As you may have already read, we held our DC branch of  International Sketchcrawl #34 at the National Portrait Gallery/American Art Museum last Sunday, and we had a pretty good turn out! (Erica had to go before we got our shot!)

We met in the Kogod Courtyard, expecting to head into the museums to start sketching, but we were pleasantly surprised to find it was "Farm to Table Family Day" which included a concert by The Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra. The band actually came over to check out what we had been up to, as they noticed a lot of people listening but with their noses buried in sketchbooks.

Afterwords we headed up to the Modern & Contemporary wing and sketched a bit. We toured the museums for a while also, but eventually most everyone found they had to head out or where tired so we called it a day.  I was happy to get a sketch of Duane Hanson's "Woman Eating" before leaving though.

And here are a couple of sketches I made when our Sketchcrawl group went to the Native American Indian Museum about a month ago.

Martin & Albert

Guido beat me to the new MLK Jr. Memorial, but I was very happy to be able to finally get a chance to see and sketch it myself. Judging from the crowds of people trekking across the mall it obviously has an immense amount of meaning for everyone who visits it.

While I was on the Mall, I thought I would check out one of my other favorite, albeit less well known memorials on the Mall. The Einstein Memorial by the National Academy of Sciences.