Tomorrow is our last day in Washington DC. Today we took the kids to the National Portrait Gallery and the Museum of Natural History. I'm not really a fan of the stuffy presidential portraits, but I do appreciate them for their technical skill. What made my day was the gallery filled with the 49 chosen portraits from the annual portrait competition. I have to acknowledge how difficult it is to be inspired to paint when there is so little outside art in my life. Today was inspiring. I think I want to start a long term project (a year maybe), where I create a self portrait each week. That's really the only goal. Mediums and techniques will vary, but I will be the subject. I think I will enter the National Portrait Gallery's annual competition (I picked up the info today) and see where that takes me....
Anyway, after the NPG, we had lunch in the Sculpture Garden (and I got to see a friend that I haven't seen since college.
This metal tree was awesome.
It was a brief meeting, but enjoyable none the less.) and headed on over to see the dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History. Of course it was Bijou's favorite part of the day (she was annoyed that the Portrait Gallery had no dinosaurs). She got to see her favorite - STEGOSAURUS! 
Model of what it may have looked like when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
It was too dark and WAY too crowded to get a picture of Bijou with the stegosaurus, so we had to settle for the triceratops skull.
We also checked out the rocks, gems and minerals. Ashni and Jena were both pretty intrigued by the Hope Diamond, but both were more impressed with the toxic fibers of asbestos in the area with crystals. It's is fun to watch Ashni go through and pick out rocks and crystals that she has in her collection at home.
We're all exhausted now, but it was well worth it. Thanks for hanging out with us Uncle Gregory (we'll be waiting patiently for your awesome pictures of our visit).
No comments:
Post a Comment