Week 3: Animals and creatures

Our next assignment after reportage was 'Animals and creatures'. During the assignment we were given many opportunities to draw animals and later develop these drawings. The activities that  held place for us were essential for this assignment as they gave us an excellent opportunity to study the animals up close, allowing us to concentrate on certain elements such as the movement and characteristics of the animal, the nature of it, or the texture of the animals skin or fur etc.

Workshop one - life drawing:  

In our first animal workshop, we had a selection of different animals brought into the University for us to study close up and draw. This was a fantastic opportunity, and was a great first taste of the assignment as we even got to handle some of the animals which as well as being really good fun, also allowed us to get an even better idea of the behaviors of the animal and the feel of them! Unfortunately I did not get to take many photographs of the animals, but here are some I did manage to capture which I was later able to work from: 

Python

Yellow bearded lizards (which stayed
 nice and still for drawing!)

Baby Meerkats (which were very playful)

Frogs and toads

Tarantula

Scorpions

 
We were also introduced to some baby guinea pigs, stick insects and a blue tongued skink. I really enjoyed being up close to the animals and I managed to produce quite a few fast sketches of each animal and attempted to capture the shape, form, movement and textures of each. The sketches I did whilst there are very limited because of this in terms of detail, colour and media. Here are a few examples from my sketchbook: 

A quick drawing of a lizard using fine liner

Focusing on the unique details of the scorpions form using pencil

A quick drawing of the tarantula using fineliner

A drawing of the frog focusing on line

 

Baby guinea pig in pencil

Baby guinea pig faces in fine liner

 

Baby meerkats in pencil. (They were hard to draw because of how quick they were!)

  










  I really appreciated the opportunity to draw these animals, and despite not really having the time to illustrate them in full detail in the moment, I think that this activity was very beneficial towards my practice because it allowed me to have some personal experience with the animals and also focus on their forms and characteristics which would help me when developing my studies later on.

Workshop two - Flamingo Land

For our second animal workshop we went on a course trip to Flamingo Land Zoo, where together we drew the animals that inhabited there. There was a great range of animals there, including:

• Tigers
• Lions
• Tortoises 
• Pythons
• Monkeys
• Giraffes
• Rhinos
• Tropical birds
• Sea lions
• Tropical fish
• Tortoises
• Meerkats
• Many more!!

I was able to catch quick photographs of some of these animals, despite them not being of the best quality I was later able to work from my images:

Tortoise

Tiger cubs

Lions

Giraffes

Fish

Rhinos

Fish

Fish

Fish

  Like the previous workshop, I found that it was very beneficial to have a chance to be up close to the animals, this time even getting to watch them in their own environment, and how they interact with each other. The more and more animals I got to see the more I found I was able to explore with my imagination too, it was also great to be able to expand my knowledge on the creatures.  It was very interesting watching each one move. I was particularly interested in the tigers and the tiger cubs, watching them play together was quite fascinating. We were able to watch the giraffes feed on leaves and gaze at the variety of fish swimming in large tanks in the aquarium which were also quite fascinating to watch move. 

Whilst at the zoo I was able to create quick sketches to capture the animals I was studying, in a similar style to how I created quick basic sketches of the animals in the previous workshop. I was then able to work from the pictures I had taken of them later. Here are some of the drawings from my sketchbook:

Fish drawings in pencil

More fish in pencil

Another fish study in pencil with more detail

I had some trouble getting the giraffes form right

Giraffe 1 using graphite

Giraffe 2 using graphite

  Despite having quite a lot of trouble when it came to capturing the giraffes form etc in my studies, I was quite pleased with the above drawings. I was on one page of my sketchbook drawing the giraffes head and neck in graphite, and on the other its body and legs. It then began to rain on my sketchbook, and the splashes reacted with my media, and when the page was turned this transferred onto the opposite study. Although at the time I was very frustrated with this, I later found the images and quite liked the way the marks looked on the page.

Rhino in pencil over two pages

Lions from behind using graphite and pencil

Lion body in graphite

Even though I wasn't able to create studies of the animals in full blown detail, or be expressive with colour etc in these studies, it was still a great learning experience for me and still enabled me to get a better grasp on studying the animals form and characters before I could later further focus on them using my own images.