Loxodonta africana

It’s late when I walk into our tiny apartment, flip the main water valve and put the kettle on.  Tomorrow, I’ll pull out the art supplies and plan my  day. 

I love being at home in two places.

This city invigorates.  So many places and things to draw.

Indoors at the Natural History Museum today, my subject towers above — “the largest mounted specimen of the world’s largest living land animal,” the Loxodonta africana.   A quick sketch, then home to those art supplies to try some ideas.

Other days, there have been meet ups with urban sketchers at the National Portrait Gallery, rubbings from monuments and manhole covers, and my favorite bench across from the Smithsonian Castle.   People stop to look over my shoulder.  Do you draw? I ask.  These conversations are the best.

Most of the drawings I do here are small and scatter to obscure sketchbooks.  But a few I remember to squirrel away in the art journal that sits on my bookshelf.

[Music by The Paperboys: Worms/ Doors of Steel.]

A closer look:

Getting to know any city, it helps to have an urbanist’s guide.  This book is a wonderful resource — not for sightseeing in the usual way, but for discovering odd and interesting subjects to draw.

The 99% Invisible City is rather like an explorer’s map.  Yesterday as I was on the hunt for those urban textures, I had a good idea for where to find them.