pencil Archives - Krister Eide Art

As a prompt for creativity, my teacher had an assignment based on the word game Balderdash. She assigned everyone an obscure word where we were to come up with different drawings for what the word could be. My word was ‘mowburnt’. The definition I gave a mowburnt was a small singe black shrew-like creature. We had to draw 30 thumbnail possibilities and then narrow them down.

This is just a preliminary sketch / WIP. Another possibility has a Horatio Hornblower-like shrew paddling a sardine can, and another, an urban shrew dreaming up a better life.

Last week, I also had chance to volunteer at the Burke Museum‘s Bird Day part of a small group from the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators. Every one was very nice and welcoming, though I was just a college student. Several explained that they had more of a science background than art when they first became illustrators.

I found out the Burke museum has a close relationship to science illustrators at the University of Washington. They hold an exhibit of new graduates from the UW program in scientific illustration every year.

In James Gurney‘s tutorials I learned that he does a lot of sketching and exhibiting in museums of natural history because of his interest in dinosaurs and birds. Because birds and a lot of other animals move so quickly, having time to study the structure of different and similar animals in a natural history museum can be very helpful for field work. At the Burke, I was also told that artists are at the museum almost every day working with the different departments. Apparently the museum employs some artists to help with their design needs and educational exhibits, but community artists are also welcome to come into the museum and work with their different animal specimens for free.