Usk Sketchmas Day 18 - Dog or Cat & Museum Trip

 The Sketchmas prompt yesterday was a "dog or cat." I don't have any pets and didn't really want to disturb a friend to go over and do a pet portrait. So I went to Petco and stood by their window to the grooming station. The dog I picked stood pretty still, but the groomer kept moving around and blocking my view. Also, I couldn't see the dog's paws because there were boxes blocking my view. I did the sketch on site but added the color at home.

On Saturday one of my art groups, Wet Paints, had a bus trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was a free trip for members...only guests had to pay. How could I pass that up? The museum had several great exhibits so I wasn't planning to spend the day sketching like I usually do. Along with two friend from the group I went to view the Manet/Degas Exhibition which was really good and extensive. Manet & Degas were friends and often painted in the same areas and used the same models. The curator of the exhibit showed a painting of each of theirs and the info by the paintings discussed how the two paintings were related. I learned a lot about both of them.

The second exhibit was titled "Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism." The two artists redefined color as they painted with colors that they sensed rather than the natural hues of what they were seeing. It was a color explosion.

The final exhibit we saw was "Women Dressing Women" which explored many of the women fashion designers from The Met's permanent collection from the turn of the century to the present day. My favorites were some of the older fashions.

The Met's Christmas tree with the beautiful angels merited a stop too.

But I did have about 30 minutes to do a sketch before we were due back on the bus. My friend Liz was sketching in front of me.