Animals in Business Attire and Botanical Plates

  • February 9, 2010 3:02 pm


Classic Scarry Illustration

In my botanical illustration lab, we have been asked to select works from the rare and endangered species exhibition at Chicago Botanic Gardens that captivate us for whatever reason. I chose a plate from Smithsonian illustrator Alice Tangerini. Her plate interested me because I enjoy technical drawings that typically involve cross sections and dissections of the plants involved. I also enjoy using pen as my tool of choice, but given I’m not an artist by training found myself questioning our instructor over ink and led weights. I didn’t know that the “H” on a pencil meant “hard” yet, “B” means “soft”.

Most the students in the class are art teachers, botanical illustrators by profession and one student is even responsible for the “1-2-3 Draw” series of books you may see in the children’s section at Border’s. It’s a neat class with neat pupils, and I am very likely the youngest student by twenty years. It gives me a bit of a chip on my shoulder at times.

I don’t have any illustration experience other than sequential art– comic panels that I have always done for fun, or storyboards for my films that are never made. I do however have an affinity for drawing upright animals in suits, driving cars– which is no doubt influenced heavily by my all time favorite illustrator Richard Scarry. Particularly, a recurring character in my own stories and panels is a cat in a suit who is a newspaperman. I’ve perfected him.

I have to stifle a chuckle in class because when my work is being critiqued our instructor will say things like “I can tell you have a great deal of illustration experience” and while that is nice and definitely helps me to keep moving forward — I realize that my only training are animals in business formal attire.

On the first day of class I was asked for my portfolio (which does not exist)– luckily, the prior weekend I had drafted two flowers from house plants and a wilting bouquet on my coffee table which was able to be critiqued. It was good enough, but I fear someday I will be asked for more and it will be a phone book that rivals Busytown. (As Tina Fey/Liz Lemon would say “I want to go to there.”)

Here’s to trying. I guess, I specialize in plants and “animals”…

Supplementary:

Here’s a great NPR piece an photo essay on Tangerini

The Richard Scarry papers at University of Conneticut (Special Collections)

Austral: Southern

  • February 1, 2010 12:45 am

“Marta says the interesting thing about fly-fishing is that it’s two lives connected by a thin strand. Come on, Marta. Grow up.” –Jack Handy

–HERE’s THE PART THAT MAY INTEREST YOU–

Amazing documentary: Rocaterrania made by a documentarian I just discovered, Brett Ingram. Such, great, great stuff. Go exploring and run with it.

Here’s an article from the NYTimes on the subject of the documentary with great stills.

–HERE’s THE INCESSANT RAMBLING PART–

My afternoon sketch-- but I don't know the flower this is.

The above is a term Austral is found in botany– and lately there’s these intersections happening all over the place. That electric charge; the tingle of being awake and starting to feel purposeful. You may argue spring closing in, but its February First (and I will spell it out for you) in Chicago– an epoch. Now, certainly I’m a winter child and it pleases me to no end to engage in winter sports, drive my car for soup lunches in the snow and shovel the walks.

Despite my outward persona as being “social”– I crave time alone, and winter serves that purpose nicely as the sidewalks empty of pedestrian traffic and the citizens of my Northern city retreat into their down turtle shells.

But there is a snap and a current, and I feel that I am supposed to know people and things and have my hands in a million projects. Lately, I’ve been starting awake with ideas and visions. Sometimes I sit in my cold drafting room folded into a -20 sleeping bag pursuing the thing in my head. Other times, I rattle of e-mails.

Everything is flowing out of the South– my heritage is starting to make this self-defining dent. It started with an e-mail trade of a cousin I had lost touch with. Then the curriculum catalog landing on my desk with the 2010 offerings at the Botanical Gardens, and I think about my nonexistent green thumb, yet the almost crippling urgency to start pushing seeds into dirt with my thumbs. Some things are just wired into your code– I come from a long line of farmers. Appalachian farmers. Then I feel this pull to be very invested in a co-worker’s stage play, and it hits on that theme.

When my brain starts overloading, I find myself needing very much to work with my hands, typically I retreat to illustration or yard work. But when I sit down the charge is too much and its hard to concentrate, and the lawn resembles Russian tundra. No snow to shovel, no leaves to pick– brown, dead grass with sun hitting at the lowest latitudes.

This entry probably looks insane and feels aimless, but I thought if I would sit here and try to think of what ignited all of this– it would become obvious. Maybe its mania or caffeine. Or Spring. I’m going to ride it.

Conan

  • January 23, 2010 9:33 pm

Photo by Dewey Nicks for New York Times Magazine, May 2009

“All I ask of you, especially young people — is one thing. Please don’t be cynical — I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.”

—–

This will run like a broken record in my head through the rest of my professional life.