Drawing Well-Dressed Beetles with Carson Ellis

DT Kids, Pencils UP!

In part one of bugs week, DT Kids learned dragonfly facts from American Museum of Natural History entomologist Jessica Ware. In part two, we get all up in our imagination with our guest artist Carson Ellis, who leads us in drawing some darn dapper beetles.

I dare you to find me a better dressed beetle.

Carson is an award-winning children’s book author and illustrator whose books include Du IZ Tak, Home, What is Love and The Shortest Day, amongst so many others.

A page from Carson’s Du Iz Tak, a children’s book written entirely in bug language.

Another beautiful spread from the book. It’s just the best.

Carson has an awesome newsletter called Slowpoke that I can’t recommend enough. She also is a mom, a partner, a farmer, and a super dear friend.

“Portrait of Artists as Goofballs”

She’s also just a ton of fun so grab your pens, pencils, paints and paper and press play above. Of course we’d LOVE to see DT Kids beetles - take a photo, post on Instagram and tag us at @DrawTogether.Studio.

DT Podcast returns! The countdown is on. DT Podcast is retuning with special art adventures, kid voices, guests and more. We will be looking for DT kids to feature on the podcast, so if your kid is excited to be part of the pod, email us at Podcast@DrawTogether.com and we’ll reach back out.

DrawTogether Grown-Ups Table

So great to see so many new people joining the GUT, where every week we learn and discuss something art/drawing-related, look at art, artists, techniques, books, supplies and such, and do a drawing assignment together.

THIS SUNDAY: Grown-Ups Table x New York Times! Today I have a new drawn story in the New York Times (The friend I mention in the piece is our guest artist Carson. See? Everything ties together.) The story will be a full page in the Opinion section of the proper paper tomorrow (Saturday.) And this Sunday in the GUT, I’ll show you how I make these drawn story step by step, then give you a prompt to make a mini-one yourself. And get this: NYT Opinion may feature some of our drawings on their Instagram!

DT GUT Scholarships Available. A super generous anonymous donor has made 5 scholarships available to the DT Grown-Ups Table in memory of his wonderful doggie Chemo. If you’d like to join the DT GUT and are experiencing hardship and can’t afford it right now, please leave a comment below. We will randomly select 5 people (no really, we’ll use a number system.) <3

Have a great, FUN, buggy weekend, y’all.

Everything is Better When We.. xoxo,

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