Science Museum of Minnesota and St. Paul’s Cathedral

8/15/15 ink, colored pencil

Escaping without a single mosquito bite, we’re back from a brief visit to the Midwest – the Twin Cities of Minnesota. This annual trip is always a good mix of family visiting and city touring, so I always manage to squeeze in sketches wherever I go. The biggest challenge this year was the weather – boiling heat with 100 percent (!) humidity on most days; a deluge on one other day. We spent quite a bit of time indoors evading both extremes, which turned out to be a sketcher’s delight.

8/15/15 ink, colored pencil

Our first indoor stop was a morning at the Science Museum of Minnesota, billed as “Minnesota’s favorite museum” for good reason. I thought Seattle’s Burke was rich in dinosaur skeletons (arguably one of my all-time favorite sketching subjects), but I’m sorry to say that it can’t hold a candle to the SMM. While the rest of my party saw all three of the museum’s jam-packed floors, I happily stayed on the paleontology floor sketching as many prehistoric critters as I had time for. I know I missed plenty of great exhibits on the other floors that I heard about later, but I’d rather see and sketch a few fantastic skeletons than run through an entire museum seeing everything only superficially. Carolinochelys Wilsoni, Diplodocus and Triceratops (the world’s most complete specimen) were plenty for me! If I lived in St. Paul, I would probably visit every week and wouldn’t run out of skeletons for a year. (Note to self and spouse: Visit again next year!)

8/15/15 ink, colored pencil

By that afternoon, the heat was unbearable, but I couldn’t see St. Paul’s Cathedral without a quick sketch. I found a spot of shade across the street, but after about 20 minutes, all I could manage was its elegant domed top before the heat got to me. Someday I’d like to go back and sketch the whole cathedral – on a cool and comfortable day.

8/15/15 inks