Aquarium Explorations

This week I explored different types of space by observing the Aquarium at the Riverbanks Zoo.  Fish, crocodiles, and urchins.  The colors, atmosphere, and compression of the Aquarium demands a different palette and aesthetic considerations than I am accustom.  A new beginning, I will be returning to the Aquarium to do more drawings...Let's see where these drawings lead.

Sketchbook page, Aquarium Study #1, marker, 

 and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Sketchbook page, Aquarium Study #2, marker, 

 and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Sketchbook page, Aquarium Study #3, marker, 

 and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Sketchbook page, Aquarium Study #4, marker, 

 and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” 

- Henry David Thoreau

School is out for summer...

...and so the sketchbook drawing commences.  Looking forward to the discoveries and activity everyday in the coming weeks!  To kick things off, some May Day celebratory drawings of flowers.

Sketchbook page, May Day Birthday #1, marker, 

 and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Sketchbook page, May Day Birthday #2, marker, 

 and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Sketchbook page, May Day Birthday #3, marker, 

 and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Sketchbook page, Finlay Park 2014 #1, marker, 

 and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Sketchbook page, Finlay Park 2014 #2, marker, 

 and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Haymarket: May Day, by Burton Jerome Barnett, 1939

August Spies: You may strangle this voice, but there will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.

Albert Parsons: O men of America, let the voice of the people be heard!

Still bright, and searing ignorance and fear, 

This stronger beacon that you tended burns 

And on this day of each advancing year 

The memory of that first May First

returns.

But now the widespread fingers strengthen, 

grow 

More lithe, and flexing at the wrist--

O fingers forming to the fist!

Now is the imminence of commmonweal--

The turgid lambency of molten iron

Hardening in even lines of steel.