Sunday, July 4, 2010

Back at the New Orleans Museum of Art



Here's an ink drawing from a trip to the New Orleans Museum of Art. This is an extremely ornate helmet (circa 1890-1900, according to the wall text) on display in the Faberge room on the second floor. This strikes me as a fairly impractical design for a helmet that one might actually wear in battle, but it does make for a fun drawing exercise.

I've been spending a lot of time at NOMA lately. Heck, I even went so far as to buy a membership, which means I get to haggle over my member's discount when I'm in the gift shop buying books that are already on sale and breaking the little magnetized puzzle toys that they have on the counter for impulse buys. Well, OK, I didn't really haggle and the toy could be put back together after the very friendly woman behind the counter helped me find all the pieces, but I like to make my life sound more exciting than it really is. In the movie version, the nice woman in the artsy sweater will be played by a giant man plucked from the ranks of the Ultimate Fighting Championships and I'll have to challenge him to a knife fight in order to avoid being charged for the broken puzzle toy. Then I'll make some sort of witty, ironic quip as I step over his still-twitching corpse and make my way out of the blood-soaked museum gift shop. It's still a little rough around the edges, but any Hollywood producers who may be reading this should think "Night at the Museum" meets "Rambo" meets "Leprechaun in the Hood." The money will roll right in.