Join us for a day of creative exploration at The Big Draw, featuring Caldecott Medal-winning author and illustrator David Macaulay! This free, day-long festival invites visitors to discover the power of drawing as a tool for communication and design.

• Live Demonstrations:

• Watch David Macaulay lead live drawing demonstrations, offering tips for your own drawing practice.

• Drawing & Design Workshops:

• Illustrator Leila Cabib will lead a bookmark design workshop, where you can create your own bookmark inspired by the Building Stories exhibition.
• Meet architects and MFA alum from the Maryland Institute College of Art to chat about how drawing plays a role in their professional work.

• Interactive Activities:

• Create collaborative chalk art with Positive Chalk.
• Sketch the historic building at the Sketch Lab table.
• Make an artist book with the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
• Explore graphic storytelling with the DC Public Library's bookmobile.

• Book Signings:

• Meet David Macaulay and get his books signed.

• Storytime & Relaxation:

• Enjoy interactive Storytime sessions where books come to life.
• Relax in the reading nook, surrounded by the books that inspired the Building Stories exhibition.

Bring your sketchbook or use materials provided by the Museum!

Program Schedule

Interactive Storytimes: 10:15 to 10:45 am and 1:15 to 1:45 pm
David Macaulay Drawing Demonstrations: 11 to 11:45 am and 2 to 2:45 pm
David Macaulay Book Signings: 12 to 1 pm and 3 to 3:45

The Big Draw Partners

David Macaulay 

David Macaulay is a Caldecott Medal award-winning author and illustrator whose books have sold millions of copies and been translated into a dozen languages. His original sketches for the illustrations in his book Rome-Antics are on display in the Building Stories exhibition. Macaulay was a recipient of the 2006 MacArthur Fellowship for his “outstanding talent.” 

Leila Cabib

Leila Cabib is a practicing and teaching cartoonist, illustrator, and animator whose work has been commissioned for newspapers, magazines, and books, including the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.  

Positive Chalk

Positive Chalk DC (PCDC) contributes to DC’s communities by creating brave spaces for families, and particularly children, to imagine their communities in new ways, inspire positive change, and develop the language necessary to advocate for themselves and their communities, particularly those that are under resourced and overwhelmed with trauma.

MICA

Located in Baltimore, MICA is the oldest continuously degree-granting college of art and design in the nation. The MFA in Illustration Practice [ILP] at MICA has at its core a philosophy of necessary reexamination and reinvention, both in your work and thinking, and in the paradigm of what it means to be an illustrator. Founding Director and faculty Whitney Sherman is a multi-faceted artist, award-winning illustrator, associated editor and contributing writer of the Bloomsbury History of Illustration textbook, and author of the book Playing with Sketches.   

National Museum of Women in the Arts

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is the first museum in the world solely dedicated to championing women through the arts. 

DC Public Library

DC Public Library’s Outreach + Inclusion Services department embeds and expands library services beyond library walls.