Zoo Trip

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Always love a sketching trip to the zoo. I began the day with my favorite tiger, working some gestural studies with a Stabilo Woody pencil.

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Primates in the Rain Forest building and River Otters.  I didn't bring my usual paints with me today because I wanted the pre-prepared backgrounds to play a big role in the page. So I used a Tradio Stylo, and some Color Brush pens. All are water soluble and allowed me to fill in and create tonal washed quickly using a water brush.

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I went back to my favorite tiger several times throughout the day. He's an excellent model.

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The barnyard was fun. Everyone I met kept talking about the piglets, which I guess are really hoglets! (Actually not, they're still called piglets!) 

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This is my favorite page of the day, all these crazy contour sketches of the chickens. Fast and fun. Now I'm exhausted but really happy with the day and the variety of sketches I got out of it. 

New Zoo Sketches

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 Lately, it seems that I just can't get enough of sketching animals. This is the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport, CT

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Birds are also something that I keep coming back to over and over through the years. It's not that I ever felt I had any particular interest in birds, never really wanted to own one as a pet, but I've always been fascinated with bird watching and with birds of prey in particular.  Yet, I'm certainly no expert when it comes to birds and I only joined the Audubon Society this year!  But over an over again I keep coming back to birds as a subject.

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It's taken me a few years to get comfortable sketching live, moving animals. I think I've finally expanded and strengthened my visual memory enough to get at least a reasonable likeness on paper.  The great 19th C artist and teacher Robert Henri, author of The Art Spirit, used to make his students look at a figure model in one room and then run up a flight or two of stairs to the studio to work on their drawing.  That was to develop their visual memory. Can you look at something with enough concentration and focus that when the object is no longer in front of you you can draw what you saw with reasonable accuracy? 

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I've heard some artists describe the process as taking a snap shot with your mind.  Look intently with awareness and then quickly shut your eyes tight as if they were the shutter of a camera and then visualize what you just saw. The next step is to be able to put what you hold in your mind's eye down on paper.

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I started years ago drawing our pets. Back then we had two dogs, two rabbits, a guinea pig and a turtle, so plenty of variety. LOL.  After a while I could draw them with ease. New types of animals though continued to remain a challenge.

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I've read some good books about sketching animals, and working from specimens at the natural history museum and nature centers certainly helps also. These are far better exercises that using a photo, always better to work from a three dimensional model. Though a photo will do if that's all you have at the time.

I have some sketches from the Beardsley Zoo from several years ago, in particular of the tiger above, and honestly the sketches are pretty bad. But that's one of the great things about keeping a sketchbook, you can see how you've improved.  There's no magic and no short cut. Just draw, as often as you can, and over time you improve. Sometimes a good book, workshop or class can really help introduce you to information or techniques that make things easier, but in the end it just amounts to practice. The most important thing is to enjoy the process and trust the process .

31 Days 31 Drawings

#INKtober click the image to enlarge

Sketching at the Zoo

There's nothing more fun than sketching at the zoo!  It's important to keep it simple and loose as your models are unlikely to hold their pose for long!

Usually when I'm sketching live animals I like to start with a mechanical pencil and get a quick sketch for  proportions and gesture. That makes it easy to erase if after just a few lines the animal has moved or gone off into a shelter.  If I get a complete or near complete quick pencil sketch then I'll switch to pen or marker to refine. For the kangaroo, deer and giraffe I chose a burnt sienna waterproof  marker because it made a statement about those animals and their coloring so right form the beginning the sketch was capturing something of the subject.

(It's also a good idea to wear a hat, sunscreen and a vest with lots of pockets to hold pens and what not.)

The rhino above was done with a fountain pen (Pilot Falcon Flex nib) and Noodlers Bulletproof black. That seemed like the right tool for all of his leathery wrinkled skin.  The primates, who were constantly on the move were done with a Pilot Varsity fountain pen, which you can pick up in most stores for about $3, it has water soluble ink and can make beautiful tonal washes when you add a water brush.

Here's another recent sketch day from a different zoo.  Aside from the camel it was sobering to see that all the animals I sketched were endangered.

 The wolves moved around a lot and I was glad I had my stool because I had to spend a lot of time just watching them, and waiting for them to return to a similar position so I could continue the sketch.

The red wolf was my last sketch of the day and his head gave me fits. I finally had to look at a photo on the internet and use gouache and markers to get it right.