last weekend my friend and i went to see a National Geographic art retrospective at Steve Kasher Gallery. it’ll be up until february 16th, so people of new york: it’s well worth a visit if you have the time. 

i was surprised to find that so many pieces were rendered in gouache instead of oil or acrylic. even though it makes sense since gouache has the best reproduction qualities (important for magazine print). but still… the way the artists handled the paint resulted in many different looks, so it was fun to study them up close and imagine their techniques. 

this piece by the Kennis Brothers was exciting to see! i had just read about them on the National Infographic blog. i liked how their sculpting background carried into their application of paint.

detail of Roy Anderson’s Tyrannosaurus Rex

Louis Glanzman’s Mayan Sacred Ball Game

H.M. Herget detail— loved the pointillistic background, i’m stealing this idea.

Walter A. Weber’s Birds of Paradise

here, a botanical watercolor by Mary E. Eaton

this piece, Freshwater Pond Life, by Ned M. Seidler was tied for my favorite. i could stare at it for hours, there’s so much going on! if i ever have an extra 12K to drop (ha), this is where it’s going.

this was my other favorite, also by Mr. Seidler, called Marsh Life. goodbye 24K.

after we were through, we moseyed on over a block to the High Line, my favorite place in the city to get away from the city.

twas a very good day.

my plant army has prospered since i left for new york

not sure how i feel about that.

clearly i’ve been terrible at keeping this up. but new year, new start… you can look forward to regular updates to this from now on.

so. what has happened since October, when i finished my internship and officially graduated my scientific illustration program?

Our Global Kitchen opened. read all about it in The New York Times. the above is the Livia Drusilla corner, what i like to call my corner. there’s my painting all blown up! isn’t it cute. you can see the full composite here. it is the reconstruction of this Roman fresco.

if you peek through the furniture you’ll find my mosaic floor design, which i illustrated based on photos from LD’s excavated villa.

this is Angela, the amaaazing painter who single-handedly finished up the Aztec marketplace mural in the weeks leading up to the exhibit opening. she likes to listen to heavy metal as she paints, hence the face. check out her gorgeous portfolio here.  

here are some more shots of pre-opening preparation:

food waste tower in progress…

since my internship wrapped up, i have been volunteering on the model-making floor. here i am painting blemishes on pumpkins. they later took a roll in the dust to diminish their plastic sheen.

here are baskets of beefsteak tomatoes painted all shades of golden for the natural, biodiverse look.

here is a naughty iguana, ready to be strung up.

i got to paint in small details, like the eye, after the model-maker airbrushed the initial layers of color.

hang in there lil’ buddy

designing and creating these original exhibits is costly, so the museum sees some returns by lending them out to other museums. therefore the exhibit is built with travel in mind, and comes with instructions on how the props within them are to be displayed. another intern and i contributed to this instruction packet by digitally mapping out every food basket on the marketplace floor (approximately 400 units) so that in a distant country it could be set up according to the original artistic vision.

these are some of my intern friends! i feel so fortunate to know them. they were good company on days when i was doing less photogenically interesting tasks, like background internet research on pterosaurs, trilobites, poison, etc. above, P is building a model ship, to be later enlarged by the preparators for an upcoming exhibit.

the North American Hall of Mammals is now open to the public so i haven’t spent much time there lately, but while it was still undergoing renovation last fall, i found it to be a safe haven to practice drawing (sketching in front of visitors still makes me anxious). how could i not take advantage of alone-time with the dioramas?! H if you’re reading this, this baby mountain goat is for you.

one of the great things about New York that makes it so enticing and difficult to leave is the large artistic community that’s coalesced here. what’s more, everyone i’ve met has talent! it’s sick. i do find there’s a lot of support, or at least opportunities, around the city to improve skills and whatnot, so i’m not really complaining. 3rd Ward has been one of my best discoveries. with membership you can attend free figure drawing sessions: they provide the model and drinks, you draw. wonderful.

alright, hyper-speed tour through the rest of my year— commence:

H came to the city for Halloween weekend. i’m Cesare from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, she’s Gabby Douglas.

Hurricane Sandy happened. we were fortunate to be just above the disaster line of the storm (areas below us lost power, were flooded…)

in the days after, a lot of comfort food was devoured, like my cousin’s magical toaster oven apple pie

a President was reelected

i saw my sister’s stage management skillz in action

we checked out the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade balloons (Kermie arms!)

the AMNH had its tree lighting ceremony with this year’s theme of collective nouns. i learned one spots a lovelyness of ladybugs, a prickle of hedgehogs, a cast of crabs, a bunch of deer.

another great NY (ok, BK) thing: the Secret Science Club. usually a series of free monthly lectures, November hosted the Imagine Science Film Festival. i wasn’t a fan of the opening musical performance (pig fetus and mice hooked up to electrical wires to be played like instruments), but some of the documentaries were great. like Flutter, a dreamy portrait of an amateur butterfly collector. or Periodic Table Table, which is about a man who, yes, built a table containing the periodic table elements:

here is a shot from when intern friend L and i attended a Lego architecture competition. after a few drinks, we built animals instead. we call this “Llama, Giraffe and Bird: A Love Story.”

an AMNH hosted lecture with entomologist E.O. Wilson and poet Robert Hass, discussing the intersection of science and art!

i have no shame. a sneaky pic from the astrophysics holiday party, where the ever-charismatic Neil deGrasse Tyson was demonstrating his sommelier skills.

aaand extremely belated, but this is my holiday postcard from me to you! dinohedge in front of the museo.

finally, the face i’ve been waking up to lately. a lovely morning back home with my little satellite.

this piece was a personal favorite of mine from the program, which is why it took me until now to write about it! i completed it for my final acrylic assignment, in which we had to paint a scene of our choice. i chose to illustrate the monkey family i studied as a research assistant in the eastern forests of Bolivia.

i’d been obsessed with monkeys as a kid (drew them repeatedly), and upon graduating from college, for which i majored in wildlife biology and conservation, the opportunity to fulfill a dream as a primatologist came up. as you can see, i did not continue down this path, for various reasons. but those three months were hands down the highlight of my life.

this species is called the Bolivian gray titi (pronounced “tee-tee”), Callicebus donacophilus. you can read about them and what it means to study them on our field blog, Titi Tales. my contribution can be read here.

some of my photos are being used for reference on their ARKive species account page. so why still make a painting? one, i never got a decent family portrait of my monkeys. because the male is the primary caretaker of growing offspring (carrying them on his back until they can run around on their own), the female is often missing from the scene, or photographed alone. two, the difficult lighting conditions of the forest make it difficult to see the true coloration of the animals. as scientific illustrator, i have the power to restore this! and arrange them at my will.

in my painting, the female is on the left. alert with hair piloerected (raised), she looks larger and more aggressive than her 12 inch stature would suggest. she was always the first to spot me and give the alarm call to alert the others (which i later used to my advantage when searching for these shy creatures in the canopy). she has less red coloration than the male, who is in the foreground on the right. he is carrying their quite-large-already baby, normally just visible as a depression on his fur.

since my main reason for being there was to record the social behavior of these monkeys with pad and pen, i had little time to photograph them, and much less willpower to lug around my DSLR camera in the 90degree-plus heat. but, my supervisor really wanted some nice pictures of them, especially since in 2009 we were still in the early stages of habituating/ID-ing individuals for study purposes. so i was allowed a week to follow different groups around (each researcher was assigned a single family over the course of those months to follow, since the monkeys had little tolerance for stalkers) to snap the best pictures i could. here are some outtakes, and some lower quality (but precious) photos from my trusty, portable point and shoot:

early morning vocalizations of Group 4 (G4). these monkeys engage in calling sessions at sunrise and various times throughout the day to reinforce their territory boundaries. when a group hears another monkey group calling, they will run to the closest border between them and respond with their own aggressive call. as these monkeys are generally quiet, invisible, and a gentle breeze could mask their movements, i often had to rely on these calling sessions to find my family. which meant getting to the forest before sunrise, waiting in the dark with ears perked.

male of GN (my group!) stuffing his face with cercropia fruit

my subadult lazing about as teens tend to do

my juvenile and subadult being their curious, mischeivous selves

probably my favorite shot (GN male and juvie)

my female reluctantly nursing her overgrown offspring (baby would massage/push at her side until she conceded)

GN family tail-twining aka family bonding time

G4 juvie. always cheeky.

see? what a tease.

G4 males with baby. it was certainly unusual to see two males sharing the caretaking resposibility for the one female (infanticide by the intruding male would be expected— and did happen in another group). instead, these guys would take turns shouldering the baby. we later determined one was an adult offspring of a neighboring group who had successfully integrated himself with this family. a few field seasons later, the elder male was pushed out. 

G4 resting, with female (center, hunched) cleaning the baby

baby on top of juvie, on top of subadult. resting.

same baby approximately 3 months later. i’ll never forget how it came down from the canopy by itself to inspect me. my insides were squeeing.

G4 adult pair duetting

another day i’ll never forget: it was raining, and i was wet and miserable but still trying to record my monkeys. they stayed huddled on a branch for most of the day, and i was wishing i could take cover with them. but then! termites started swarming from the ground. the winged females were taking their nuptual flight! my monkeys climbed to the top of the trees and picked them from the sky.

it seemed all of the forest came alive to feast.

yet another day i won’t forget: it was work as usual in the forest until field members from the house came to retrieve us for a special talk being given downtown by none other than the premier primatologist/conservationist, Jane Goodall!

my last day working in the field, GN male and juvie napping side-by-side.

GN subadult napping right across from them. i was just below. sleeping in front of their stalker.. trust, hard-earned.

and for those of you who could care less about monkeys: here’s a three-toed sloth i came across pooping (well at least trying to) at the bottom of a young toborocci tree.

sorry for the lack of updates, i’ll get all my final course projects up soon! earlier this week i relocated to the east coast to begin my internship at the American Museum of Nautral History in new york! my official start date is this coming monday, dun dun dunn. so far i’ve been exploring and enjoying this crazy city on my own. there’s so much happening i don’t think i can ever get bored (though i do miss my view of the ocean). not sure how much i can divulge while i’m working there, but i’ll try to keep you in the loop! for now enjoy some pictures:

(west coast)

our pigeon babes, all growd up! i could tell it was them because they weren’t as flighty as their parents and let me observe them for a while. the fleshy flap on the upper portion of their beaks was also still gray, indicating a juvie rather than an adult (the flap eventually turns white)

celebrated PRIDE and other summer festivities in the city. had to squeeze in as much as i could!

friends and visitors and pastries in dolores park

got fit with my buddy

publication of a cat i drew for the SF SPCA Our Animals Magazine (summer 2012). the organization has been collaborating with artists to illustrate animals in need of a home. i’m happy to say this girl was adopted out!

ferry ride to oakland for art murmur— can’t wait to experience this again! tons of art galleries and live music open for the public. with free shuttle buses, inconvenience is not an excuse.

giant bubbles amid warehouses and the packed crowd watching below

congrats to my friend who got into her dream grad program in europe!! hopefully we’ll see each other again before you go..

a fortune found crumpled on my doorstep, my mantra as of late

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a five-hour red-eye later…

(east coast)

hello new york!

and, as i’m currently obsessed, here’s my soundtrack on the subway.