In/Out

Lara has been playing with interior and exterior spaces in her artwork recently. Some of this is inspiration from the way her school's yearlong theme - castles - has tied into learning about perspective drawings in art class and thinking about space design as they transform their classroom into a reasonably functional medieval city-state complete with working drawbridge and moat at the door. (Incidentally? Man, I love that school.)

First, a perspective drawing of a super-minimalist room. It is so totally great, with its mix of detailed ink, patient and technically varied watercolors, and that hilariously wild zig-zag of crayon on the door (aka "I got tired of coloring everything in," which is the kind of refreshing honesty you would love to hear from, say, Rembrandt, and his whole "meh, I don't really feel like painting the hands" deal...):



I really love it - it's now framed and hanging in the office.

And now a series of row houses, which make me happy because, hey, this is what houses look like to a city kid - none of this peaked-roof-with-a-front-yard nonsense that is the only type of house ever illustrated in any book. I also like how the doors get progressively more functional - she is working on taking more and more advantage of the third dimension: