St. Petersburg, FL
This summer, I decided to try something new artistically and signed up for Urban Sketching classes at Crealde School of Art (taught by Thomas Thorspecken). Drawing backgrounds and perspective have always been a struggle of mine as an artist, as well as drawing quickly and not being afraid to make mistakes. I had hoped that the class would help me improve in these areas and learn new techniques, but a part of me was afraid that the class would frustrate me and cause me to give up entirely. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, and I enjoyed Urban Sketching from the start.
After the first couple lessons, I wanted to make the most of what I was learning, so I decided to spend my 4th of July vacation visiting a different city each day (St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Tampa, Orlando, and Mt. Dora) and complete at least one Urban Sketch per location. My first trip was to St. Petersburg. Naturally, I had to visit the Salvador Dali Museum.
I thought an art museum would be a great choice for sketching since no one would be bothered by or surprised to see an artist drawing in an art museum, but it proved to be a bit more of a challenge than I expected. There weren’t many benches or places to sit in the main exhibit, and when I finally found one with an open seat facing some paintings, I took it immediately. However, due to the shortage of seating in the exhibit, I decided to render my sketch in a quick grayscale instead of watercolor so that I wouldn’t hog the seat for too long.
The two women in the center of the sketch are looking at a painting titled “Galacidalacidesoxiribunucleicacid” (no idea how to pronounce a portmanteau that portentous). This painting is immense in size, and my sketch barely included a fourth of it. The museum provides an audio guide to explain the background and meaning behind the surreal imagery in Dali’s paintings, and all of the visitors in my sketch are using the audio guides. I had one as well, but the device was not working very well and the audio would cut in and out unless I held the audio jack tightly in place. The third woman on the right of the sketch is viewing “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.” I cannot recall which painting was in the frame on the lefthand side of my sketch. Sorry, Dali.
Date: 7/2/2018
Time spent: 1 hour