Mutter Museum Sketches

It's really about time that I posted these sketches. They were all done at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia about a month or so ago. Very quickly done at first and then finished in class. All done in graphite, I wouldn't say more than an hour or 2 spent on each drawing.

   

Top horizontal - The Mutter Museum has a gigantic case of human skulls. I could have spent all day looking at them, drawing each one. However I was with a friend, and for the sake of not spending all day in one place I had to move quickly. Most of the skulls were European in origin and most of them were criminals. In front of each skull was a card with information, and some of the skulls even had calligraphic looking writing on the forehead (look closely at the second skull from the left).

From left to right,

Such a random artifact. Just a dried up preserved arm in a glass case. I liked how corpse-y/creepy it was so I went ahead and sketched it. I liked finishing it the most though with the pattern in the back. I think I spent a whole class just quietly sketching away at that background.

This is a very quick contour drawing of the skeleton of 2 infant conjoined twins. They're joined at the ribs and the skull/face, but have separate spines, legs, and arms. I really wanted to draw this but didn't think I would have time for all the little bones so contour seemed to make sense. I'd like to take this drawing into illustrator sometime and maybe make a very simple t-shirt design out of it. Ah, the possibilities.

At the top left is a shrunken head. WITH AN AFRO. Yeah. Bottom right was a model of a woman with a horn growing out of her forehead. Cool stuff.

Basics Basics.

We were supposed to paint a still life of trash, so I took the plate I recently broke, a used teabag, and a dead portion of flower from my roommates dying flower arrangement. 

 

First oil painting in full color. I think it's fairly obvious as to what everything is, but in case you were wondering, a green mixing bowl, a clear glass, 3 tangerines, 2 box things, all put on a brown fabric setup.

First and only painting I have somewhat finished in class. Here's how my painting class goes. Hw: make a still life on your own. Class, come make a still life without ever having hopes of finishing it. The end. I started getting tricky with the teapot. Cuz I like teapotz. Then my teacher was all 'FILL IN THE REST BAW.' So then I was like 'UGH FINE BUT I'M NEVER GONNA FINISH ANYWAY AND FFFF.' yep.

 

 

I think this is one of my favorites out of all of my drawings in class. We were supposed to be focusing on the perspective of the environment but  THIS GUY HAD 2 AWESOME SWORD-THINGS. How could I ignore them?

HERE HAVE A DRAGON.

Haiti

So from left to right:

1) This is the original version when I scanned and placed them together. This is also before I understood Auto-complete. Thanks Alex, I almost wasted another day of my life editing scans together. x.x But I think it's cool for you guys to see this preliminary stage.

2) This is how the piece looks all together with some levels edits and cleaning up. Basically this is where I start from before laying on basic color. I try to keep the integrity of these lines when I digitally paint.

3) This is RIGHT before I put on the final coloring touches with fancy photoshoop trickery. ;)

And here's the final piece. :]

I guess I owe a little bit of explanation of the piece itself but I think I want to leave it somewhat vague. Here's what I will say, the guys at the bottom? Pretty much responsible for Haiti being in trouble to begin with. Oh and rebirth symbolism is rampant. Yep. That's all I'm giving you.