E.T., martini up!
For a long time while I was sketching, I thought this looked like the aliens in Independence Day. When I added the flower, it started to look a bit like an opaque martini glass.
Terracotta Kylix (drinking cup) with flower, ca. 1300–1225 BCE
Sketch 046: Terracotta Kylix (drinking cup) with flower, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Greek Government, 1927
Straw decoration sketch
This sketch was surprisingly hard; another one where I just finally stopped erasing, deciding to leave it alone. I fall into the category of “chicken scratch” sketchers. I put down short, quick strokes, lots and lots of them. If I don’t like the first few dozen, I press a little harder and make them darker, as if that’s the problem. Well, that’s one of the problems, but not the problem. While I’m sketching with my right hand, I’m kneading the eraser in my left hand, getting it ready.
Straw, 1230-1250, German, silver
What fascinates me about this straw is the time frame: 1230-1250. There are a gazillion things in the world that I never took any time to consider, and straws being invented around 3,000 BCE is one of them. If anyone had asked me as to when straws originated, I would have guessed in the 20th century, after plastic was invented. Straws have always been plastic, right? I was wrong, wrong, wrong, about 5,000 years wrong.
Sketch 045: Straw, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1947
Bonnet
Quaker bonnet, capote style, ca. 1850
Sketch 040: Bonnet, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Mrs. Winthrop Trowbridge, 1964
Neck needs to be longer
Water Bottle from Tutankhamun’s Embalming Cache, ca. 1336–1327 BCE
Sketch 035: Water Bottle from Tutankhamun’s Embalming Cache, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Theodore M. Davis, 1909
Sketch of a sculpture
Marble Head of a Horse, Greek (Attic), 2nd half of the 6th Century, BCE
Sketch 032: Marble Head of a Horse, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Walter C. Baker, 1971
It's a long story ... 