Museum Studies (2010)
Finding time
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The Chukchee (or Chukchi) are a tundra-dwelling folk, who for centuries resisted the Russians’ attempts to conquer them. I don’t normally associate snow-dwelling tribes with war or armor, but the Chukchee armor on display at the American Museum of Natural History was very interesting in its construction. The whole thing was interesting, but the helmet stood out to me, both as an interesting shape and as a clever design. In the museum, the clothing and armor are dressed on a mannequin.
It’s probably irrelevant to you, but these studies are not indicative of the order in which they were done, neither in most cases were the pieces shown together done the same day. Rather, I’ve tried to mix them up for variety.
As with the Society of Illustrators, where I did figure drawing, getting to the AMNH was about 45 minutes by subway each way from our apartment up near the George Washington Bridge. So going to the museum to draw inevitably took up more than half a day. For this reason, I really wish the museum had later hours. It closed at 5:45pm every day. So if I was going to get in 4 hours or so of looking around and drawing, I had to leave my apartment by 1pm. That meant that museum days were things I fit in typically between assignments, or at the front-end, when I needed reference and was not in 4th gear on a painting. Sometimes, I’d go on the weekend, but the crowds could make things tricky.