I’ve been a bit too housebound lately; I haven’t been getting out to any life drawing classes. So today I decided to spend some time drawing on the Posemaniacs site. It’s not a substitute for live models, but there’s a iphone app and a 30 second pose option so it’s pretty fun.

We spent Christmas in Salt Lake City this year.  Normally that would have meant an all out extravaganza of snowboarding, but I’ve been nursing a muscle strain and my doctor forbid me from my favorite snow sports.  So instead I took some time to visit some of the new cultural institutions that have popped up in the last couple of years.  Like the University of Utah’s art museum.  Formerly housed in a small, dark annex building on campus, the museum now has a gleaming, much larger new home.  It’s a great showcase for the museum’s modestly sized but inclusive collection, and the views from the building are beautiful.  The downside of all this newness is that it is much more of a typical museum, complete with entry fee, and therefore much less accessible to the majority of Salt Lake’s residents.

The day I visited it was so empty and quiet that I did not realize I had stayed past closing until a guard came to ask me to leave. Not a great situation for the museum, and I do hope they find a way to draw in more crowds, but ideal for quiet sketching.

Over the last couple of years the California Academy of Sciences has been being rebuilt in Golden Gate Park. Last week was my first opportunity to see the new building, and it is really spectacular.  It’s a totally green building, from it’s “living roof” garden to trashcans labeled ‘compost’, ‘recycling’, and ‘landfill’.

It was very crowded but I still managed to squeeze in a tiny bit of sketching. Every 3rd Thursday of the month admission is free, so I intend to make it a habit to go every month and try and draw a little.  Hopefully as the building starts to become less of a novelty the crowds will even out a bit and it will be easier to draw without getting knocked about.

I’m thinking of applying to the Girls Drawing Girls group. It seems like it would be a lot of fun, so to that end I sketched up this version of Poison Ivy last night. She still needs some work on the hands and a lot of cleaning, but I’m looking forward to finishing her up and getting to the coloring. Maybe I’ll draw Harley Quinn next, since the new Batman movie seems to have given me Batman on the brain.