As a third term senior who had finally completed all of her degree requirements, I used this last term to take fun classes that were completely unrelated to my career aspirations. As a result, one such class I took was drawing and painting, which ended up being one of my favorite classes ever.

The only requirement for drawing and painting is that you attend the weekly three hour night class (7-10 PM) once a week. For me, this was the perfect opportunity to take a break from work (yes, even though I did not need to, I ended up taking some real classes this term for fun…), listen to chill music, and paint. I was even able to convince the art teacher, Prof. Jim Barry, to give me control of the aux, so I made a playlist specific for art class. I even received many compliments on my playlist (which, in my opinion, is the best type of compliment).

For the rest of this blog, I’ve just compiled a collection of the paintings I made and the reference photos I drew from. Some of my renditions are better than others …

Figure 1: This is an image I took from my Galápagos trip (which you can read about here). This image specifically is from Rabida Island.

Figure 2: This is another image from our Galápagos trip. This one is of Kicker Rock, which is the island that Darwin based some of his first sketches of the Galápagos islands on.

Figure 3: This is an image I took of the Getty Villa earlier this fall before the fires…

Figure 4: Some nights during drawing and painting we have a live model to sketch. I am truly atrocious at figure drawing, so here are two examples of my (failed) attempts at trying to draw one of the models.

Figure 5: This is an image I took from a dumpling-making-venture I had this summer. Unfortunately, I do not think my art accurately captures how delicious the dumplings were.

Figure 6: This is an image I took when I went to Greece last summer (which you can read about here). There were so many cats everywhere, and I thought this one was especially cute 🙂

Figure 7: This is another Greece photo. My friend has a thing for vintage cars and motorcycles, so I ended up with a lot of pictures of them on my phone.

Figure 8: A third (and final) Galápagos trip photo of flamingos from Rabida Island.

Figure 9: This was was just a fun recoloring rendition of the art room 🙂

Figure 10: In honor of turtle month (May) this one was an attempt at drawing some of the turtles from Caltech’s famous turtle pond.

Figure 11: Another Greece pic 🙂 This one was taken from the front of a bookstore in Santorini.