Jocelyn Curry Lettering and Illustration

Florida: Airplane Lettering & Marco Island Journal Page

 

Now that it is May in Seattle, and the sunshine is here, I feel I can reveal that I went to Florida (again) in February. Along with me came the sketchbook I made for my 2011 trip to the coveted tropics and warmth of the Sunshine State. Thank you cousins and friends who made both of these getaways possible. You know who you are!

Vacation started when I was high above the frigid Rocky Mountains. Out came the sketchbook, and with what I had on hand (favorite sketching pen and little travel set of watercolors) I freehanded the above logotype of my destination. Rarely do I take time to sit and play with letterforms, but what better time than at 32,000 feet and at the beginning of a vacation? It was fun.

In favor of simply hanging out, walking and shelling on the beaches, eating, and bike riding, and because my Florida days were fewer than last year, I didn't complete many sketches this time around. However, an inspiring and light-hearted day trip to the classic old resort destination of Marco Island (off the SW tip of the peninsula) with my cousins afforded the opportunity to record some of the things we saw and did. Please click on the image below to see a larger view:

To see and read the entries about Florida I posted in 2011, please click here.

Skulls, Feathers, and Bugs: Specimen Drawing at the Burke Museum

Beginning with a challenging subject, a mammal skull, each student in this North Cascades Institute-sponsored class began the day with warm-up contour drawings. Shading with graphite and charcoal was practiced, and then a more developed drawing was made during the morning hours of this one-day class held in the classroom at the Burke Museum on the University of Washington campus. Above, a visual step-by-step tutorial I created for this class features how to sketch and shade a beaver skull.      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above: a few examples of class work. Accuracy of form was emphasized, but so was the addition of some color, even where color was not blatantly evident. Once the skull renderings were developed, I distributed wild turkey tail feathers for a contrasting subject. In these, the zig-zag pattern of color gave the drawers a chance to blend colored pencil pigments to achieve the colors and feather textures.

Above: students successfully rendered the soft, downy part of the feather, the graceful curve of the rib, and the woven look of the banding.

 

 

 

 

 

My original plan was for the turkey feather sketches to be warm-ups to drawing a portion of a spread bird wing as shown in the photo above on the right. Naturalist Katie Roloson, from the NCI, gave a brief talk on feathers and wings. She is seen holding the wing of a red-tailed hawk, and I am holding an owl wing. Katie had brought "bug boxes" as alternative subjects for drawing. Most students opted to draw moths, butterflies, dragonflies or beetles as their final specimens, most without the aid of a magnifying glass, but one student came prepared and drew a beetle using a glass as seen in the photo above on the left.

Thank you to the Burke staff members Carl Sander and Diane Quinn for assisting and supporting NCI's educational programming outside the organization's Learning Center at Diablo Lake.