My class participated in a series of reportage illustrations in collaboration with the Cambridge museums. Each of us was assigned to a different location.

Having been assigned the zoology museum, I chose my materials to be pencils, pens and chalk pastels to capture the environment of the modern building filled with a variety of skeletons, taxidermy and wet specimens. We also participated in a video collection of the class’s artwork and a newspaper publication of the project, which will be shared with the public in September 2025.

“When you spend hours at a time looking at a singular spot, either a room, architecture, object or even people, there is an inherent sense of intimacy and connection that comes with it. You notice all the little details of whatever it is you’re drawing as you’re being forced to concentrate.

You see the knicks in the bones of an animal; you notice the chips in the walls of a building, or the way that someone’s hair curls at the back of their neck on one side and is straight on the other. There is a sense of connection through knowledge and observation. As an artist, I notice the way that the light falls on a subject, I notice the colour of the lighting, the shape of the shadows and the way that the feathers on a bird change colour under the light.

When you draw in a place like a museum, you uncover a second layer of knowledge that the average visitor wouldn’t be privy to. While there may still be a layer of glass between you and the subject, you can easily learn as much about a piece as the curator who displayed it.”