A Return to the Zoo

 

8/18/25 tapir and rhino, Woodland Park Zoo (I got all the parts of the rhino but none assembled!)

I woke with a start: It was already mid-August, and I hadn’t yet been to Woodland Park Zoo! (In fact, at the admission desk when I renewed my membership, I learned that I hadn’t re-upped since 2023; the last time I visited had been exactly two years ago on Aug. 18. What a weird coincidence!)

Like the pets I showed yesterday, which were all done from photos, my mission at the zoo was to get more brush pen practice, this time with live animals. In the past, I’ve really enjoyed making animal gestures using watercolor pencils or graphite. The brush pen, though, is an ideal tool for making expedient gestures, and I think I love it even more than pencils for this purpose. The variable line strokes are perfect for fur and feathers.

Siamang and orangutans

Although I have many childhood memories of Woodland Park Zoo, some of my fondest are as an adult – my first few years as an urban sketcher. That first summer of 2012, I visited the zoo quite regularly, and that’s how I discovered how much I enjoy drawing live animals. It was great practice for sketching moving subjects and good training for sketching in public. As years went on, and my sketchbook and I began exploring more widely, I stopped going to the zoo as frequently, but every time I go, I’m reminded of those enjoyable early times.

Steller's sea eagle and Humboldt penguins

Beyond the fun of sketching animals, the zoo is a great place to walk, with lots of beautiful trees and landscaping. It’s an ideal way to combine my fitness walking with sketching. The zoo is back on my radar now; I hope to make more use of my membership before the wet weather sets in.

After my zoo visit, my plan was to walk to Fresh Flours for a pastry and coffee while I made a sketch journal entry. Before leaving the zoo, I made one last sketch of a penguin in the sketch journal so that I'd have sort of a segue to the bakery recorded in the journal. Then tragedy struck: Fresh Flours was completely sold out of pastries!

Rhinos and Dragons and Bears – Oh, My!

 

5/4/22 Malayan tapir and rhinos at Woodland Park Zoo

Some sketchers I know visit their favorite gardens or parks over and over, year-round, and never tire of sketching the same trees or plantings. I feel that way about Woodland Park Zoo. If I had to choose a single favorite sketching subject, it would be animals from life. I could probably sketch at the zoo every week and never tire of it. Although in recent years I haven’t visited as often as I did during my first few years of sketching (it was where I first learned to become comfortable sketching in public), I still get my money’s worth from our zoo membership.

Last Wednesday afternoon warmed up to the mid-60s and partly sunny – ideal zoo weather, at least for humans. We had hoped it would be warm enough for the other animals, too. Many were still sleeping in their shelters, but I found plenty that were active enough to see and sketch.

My favorites on this trip were the rhinos (above), whom we don’t see often. After the Woodland Park’s long-time resident elephants were transferred to a different zoo several years ago, the endangered one-horned rhinos moved into the elephants’ former home, so they are now much easier to see close-up. They wear a fascinating hide of what looks like plate armour.

A bat eating from a hanging bowl. I had a hard time figuring out what part of it was what!

Although I’ve sketched the Komodo dragons several times, usually they are so still that I wonder if they are even awake. I had never seen one so active as last week. The one I sketched was exploring its territory thoroughly, flicking its long, peach-colored, forked tongue rapidly and continuously. It was a bit unnerving when it suddenly stared me down through the glass, tongue still flicking, but I took advantage of the close-up view to capture it.

Komodo dragon and Chilean flamingo

It was wonderful to get a brief glimpse of the two adorable sloth bear cubs, who were born on Jan. 1 this year. I didn’t get much of one before mama led it away.

Sloth bear cub and Asian brown tortoise

Technical notes: I usually bring my full sketch bag when I visit the zoo, since I never know what might catch my attention. This time we were using the opportunity of our visit through the large park for our fitness walk as well as seeing animals, so I felt like traveling light. Thinking about all the animals I have sketched there, I realized that I could capture probably 95 percent of them with either brown or black or both. So I brought only those two colors plus pink (in case I sketched flamingoes), a rainbow pencil (which I didn’t use) and a waterbrush – that’s it. The sketchbook was my square Hahnemühle. The more I use it, the more I appreciate its compact, 5 ½-inch square format, which fits so nicely in my small fitness-walking bag and is also easy to hold for quick gesture sketches.

Brown, black, pink -- all I need at the zoo!

Como Park Conservatory and Basilica of St. Mary

8/17/15 ink, watercolor (Como Park Conservatory)

On the one day of our trip to the Twin Cities that was neither too hot nor too wet (see the earlier post for day 1), we spent a beautiful afternoon at Como Park Conservatory and Zoo in St. Paul. The rest of my party opted to spend most of their time viewing the many and varied plant exhibits while I stayed outside to sketch the conservatory itself. A hundred years old, it’s a grand and elegant building of glass. (I’ve never had the nerve to sketch our own conservatory at Seattle’s Volunteer Park, but given that Como Park’s is much larger, I probably should stop procrastinating.)

8/17/15 ink, colored pencil

After finishing that sketch, I had a choice: Catch up with my party in the plant exhibits? Or hit the small but well-designed zoo instead? It didn’t take me long to choose animals over plants. Although much tinier than Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo where I sketch often, Como Park’s zoo has wonderful exhibits of orangutans and gorillas that I could see close-up. In addition, the zebra was close enough that I could sketch its pattern – something I’ve had difficulty doing at Woodland Park’s much larger African exhibit.

(See more animals of the rural kind in tomorrow's post.)

I have to share what I consider to be a small urban sketching victory: I was sketching small studies of mice and frogs when I noticed a young girl watching me intently. Shortly afterwards, I heard her asking her mother, “Mom, do you have your notebook?” and later in a different part of the zoo, I saw her sketching in that notebook! It’s the unofficial part of our manifesto: “Encourage others to sketch by being an example.”

It poured most of the next day, so one of our indoor activities was visiting the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. I’d love to go back sometime and sketch the exterior, but for this trip, I settled for the main altar. 

8/17/15 ink

8/17/15 inks

8/18/15 inks, watercolor (Basilica of St. Mary)

Animal Life Drawing

 

8/16/22 The entry queue of strollers at Woodland Park Zoo

The stroller set was in high gear at Woodland Park Zoo last week. Arriving at opening time, waiting for Ching to join me (see her lovely zoo sketches here), I warmed up with a few sketches of people queued up for entry. Then the real fun began!

Out of habit, I almost always start out in a certain direction, but I realized the last time I sketched at the zoo that I often miss certain animals. This time, I made a conscious decision to walk in the opposite direction, and I caught several that I hadn’t sketched in a while.

Like the Australasia exhibit where all the marsupials are – I finally saw a wallaroo joey outside of its mom! I tried to sketch it while it was nursing, but it was hard to see. Just as I was zoomed in with my phone, I saw the cutie pop back into its pocket. My sketch doesn’t show much, so I’m showing you the adorable photo, too, just before it hopped into the pocket (end of post).

Wallaroos and a rhino's rear

My other favorite on this visit was the warthog (I heard a lot of kids screaming “Pumbaa!” as I sketched). Two were in the exhibit, and one moved slowly enough from one end to the other that I could catch it from various angles and levels of detail.

Warthog

I’m sure I’ve made this comparison before, but sketching animals is much like life drawing – except that the “pose” duration is always a surprise. The kookaburra and tapir gave me as long as a minute each, while other animals continually moved. When an animal moves once I’ve begun a sketch, I use the rest of the sketchbook page to start other gestures. When it returns to a previous gesture, I pick up on the previous sketch. Eventually at least one of the “poses” becomes easiest to complete.

Hippopotamus 

Red-necked wallaby

Kookaburra, tapir and another view of the rhino

Ching and Tina at the zoo, zoo, zoo! (Sorry if that leaves
you with an earworm ;-) )

Mama wallaroo and her joey

Woodland Park Rose Garden

9/14/18 Woodland Park Rose Garden

During the iffy-weather season (and by that I mean September through June), USk Seattle must have a contingency plan for any outdoor event. In August when we planned yesterday’s outing to Woodland Park Zoo’s Rose Garden, it was so warm and sunny that we thought we’d still have a good chance of dry weather by mid-September. Our contingency plan was optimism.

Looking out the window at the downpour as I got ready to leave for Woodland Park, I wondered if I would be standing at the meeting point alone. Only three other sketchers joined me, and we applauded ourselves for being hardcore urban sketchers! Luckily, it was barely sprinkling by then, and in between intermittent spitting, the sun came out! And a little later, many other sketchers joined us.

Although most of the roses were past their prime, the garden was still full of color from late-blooming flowers as well as trees just beginning to turn. (Trivia from the zoo’s website: Spent flowers from the pesticide-free garden are fed to zoo animals, especially the gorillas, who love floral snacks.) The topiary, bushes and lawn were lush and bright green from the recent rain – something we haven’t seen in months. After all that heat and wildfire smoke, it finally felt “normal” again.

A few weeks ago when my Drawing Nature class met at this same garden, I was intrigued by the fanciful topiary. It was fun tackling one of the funky trees with charcoal, but in the back of my mind, I fully intended to sketch one again sometime in color. I went out to the middle of the garden so that I could place the gazebo in the same composition.

After strolling around a while to admire the well-tended plantings, I walked through the Sensory Garden, which features bells and chimes that can be played, an artificial hill, and other interactive exhibits. I liked the composition of the bright blue poles and slender trees behind them.

Yay for sketchers who scoff at a little rain!

Cherry Blossom Pink Flamingo

 

4/9/26 Chilean flamingoes, Woodland Park Zoo

Since I park on that side of the zoo, I like to catch the
Humboldt penguins on my way out.

On yet another gorgeous day (we were treated to eight of them consecutively last week), I went fitness walking through Woodland Park Zoo. Silly me – I forgot that it was still spring break, which gave me déjà vu of my visit to the Smithsonian National Zoo. (I exaggerate; Seattle’s zoo will never be as crowded as DC’s panda exhibit was, although as I was walking out, the attendant told me that she had counted 6,000 visitors so far that day – a combination of spring break and several field trips.)

I usually avoid the Chilean flamingo exhibit because it smells so bad there. However, the cherry blossom pink crayons in my bag compelled me to use them (holding my breath). At least half the large population on exhibit were a pale grayish-brown instead of pink. The keeper who was washing out their feeding tanks informed us that the dull-colored ones were still young. When they matured, they would take on the brilliant pink hues that flamingoes are known for.

Detail showing the "licked" color wash and textured details added with water-soluble pencil. 
I used a Derwent Drawing pencil for shading.

Technical notes: On a whim, I colored the flamingo by using a waterbrush to “lick” the end of a Raspberry Red Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayon and painting it like watercolor. Then while that was still wet, I used orange and red Museum Aquarelle pencils for some feather details. I don’t know why I don’t use those techniques together more often – I love the look of the smooth wash combined with texture. Now that the crayon holder I MacGyver’d gives me easy access to a “watercolor palette,” I have to remember to take advantage of it more often.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Neocolor II crayons? That’s not new – I’ve loved them for many years. The difference now is that I’m able to use them on location, so my long-time crush has turned into a committed relationship. Although I wrote a thorough review several years ago, I might need to write a fresh love letter sometime soon.

Media Mishaps at the Zoo

3/2/26 Grizzly and brown bears, Woodland Park Zoo (Derwent Drawing pencil in Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook)

This is the time of year when we are occasionally surprised by delightfully sunny and even warmish days. Although it was still cold in the morning, the afternoon was just right for one of my favorite fitness-walking locations: Woodland Park Zoo.

Starting in the opposite direction from my usual zoo route, I spent some time on the Living Northwest Trail. I’m often disappointed in this section because many animals like to stay hidden, but on this afternoon, I saw and/or sketched almost all the residents.

Despite being the most frustrating, my favorites to attempt to sketch were the young bear pair, Fern and Juniper (Fern is actually a grizzly, not a brown, I learned later). I watched for quite a while as they wrestled and played continuously, their heads often buried in each other’s long fur. Waiting patiently (more patiently than most visitors, who snapped videos and then moved on quickly, just like at art museums), I drew whatever feature or shape I could capture in a second or two. When the bears flipped over and revealed their heads, I quickly refined what I’d drawn before (top of post). Challenging but so much fun!

The lazily grazing and dozing mountain goats were no challenge at all by comparison.

Mountain goats (Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle and Derwent Inktense pencils in Hahnemuhle sketchbook)

Huckleberry, the sole male elk, and one of his mates were resting together by a tree – also easy. However, this is when my media mishaps began. I hadn’t sketched with Tombow Dual markers in a long time and had given most away during my downsizing. Somehow I found one in my hand recently, so I put it in my bag on a whim. (I used one at the Cocoa Legato open mic recently, too.)

Elk (Tombow Dual marker in Hahnemuhle sketchbook)

Sketching these elk reconfirmed what I don’t really care for about Tombows. Although I do enjoy being able to do quick and easy shading by washing the water-soluble ink (a favorite technique for many years), I don’t like the stiff lines that the hard tips on these markers make, especially when drawing animals and other organic subjects. I much prefer a fluid, “hairy” brush. Trying to recap the pen as I was thinking about this, the cap slipped out of my hand and disappeared between the boards in the trail walkway (and we all know that the most valuable part of a marker is its cap; without it, the pen is useless).

I ended my visit with a favorite exhibit, the Humboldt penguins of South America. Luckily for me, it was feeding time. The keeper carefully and fairly distributed fish to each penguin (calling some by name). Unlike most birds around food, the penguins crowded around the keeper but were very orderly, waiting their turn (imagine gulls or crows waiting their turn!).

Humboldt penguins (Pentel Sign brush pen, Pitt Artist Pen, Inktense pencil in Hahnemuhle sketchbook)

I knew my black Pentel brush pen was running dry, but I hoped that I could squeak through the sketch – barely. To make up for it, I pulled out a gray Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen, and by poor coincidence, it was nearly dry, too!

All I can say is: Thank goodness for colored pencils!

Simple Materials at the Zoo

 

8/18/23 Rhino, Woodland Park Zoo

For visits to the Woodland Park Zoo, a simple color palette of brown and gray usually covers most animals (I also always bring pink, just in case I want to sketch flamingoes). On this trip, the zoo was mobbed with young, fast-moving kids. I had to sketch even faster than my usual fast pace, so I kept it even simpler: One Blackwing graphite pencil and a white Uglybook (yes, in addition to all those colors, Uglybook does make a plain white sketchbook, too).

Humboldt penguins

It was a good test to see how little I could draw and still capture the essence of an animal, like only the eyes and snouts of Water Lily and Guadalupe, a pair of submerged hippos (below).

Hippos

Endangered

 

2/6/26 palm cockatoo, Woodland Park Zoo

On one of our couple days of “false spring” last week, I took my fitness walk around Woodland Park Zoo. I told myself I’d make one brisk circuit of the zoo grounds first without sketching, then go back to sketch, but I couldn’t resist stopping when I got to the Conservation Aviary. One of my favorite zoo exhibits, it’s home to several free-roaming and -flying birds that are all, very sadly, endangered. It’s possible to observe the birds fairly closely, and unlike tiny birds, these exotic beauties move relatively slowly, so they are more easily sketchable.

Great argus

Southern ground hornbill and Humboldt penguins

More penguins

After finishing my walk, I ended my visit at the Humboldt penguin exhibit, another favorite. They, too, are endangered, so my theme for the day ended up being endangered birds.

Stepping back from the exhibit, I decided to catch a few human gestures, too (below). The young boy who repeatedly squatted to see the swimming penguins was fun to try to capture! (I often practice squatting during yoga and nearly daily as part of my fitness routine, and I envied how easy he made squatting look! I guess it is when you’re 3!)

Watching the penguins

Paper notes: I knew that toothy Hahnemühle would be a bit too strong with super-soft Derwent Drawing pencils, but I tried it anyway. It wore down my pencils like sandpaper, and it was difficult to draw any fine details like eyes. Although I didn’t mind Stillman & Birn Beta’s milder tooth when I was making landscapes, I don’t care for Hahnemühle. I would have enjoyed smooth S&B Zeta much more, but I don’t like using wet media on that. I’d have to either decide which type of material to use that day and bring the appropriate sketchbook, or bring both sketchbooks everywhere, just in case. Arrggh! (More first world mixed-media problems.)

When I got to the quick human gestures at the end of my visit, I pulled out my current daily-carry Field Notes, which contains their typically smooth, all-purpose paper. That turned out to be quite lovely with a Drawing pencil, which went down as fast and smooth as a marker.

Humboldt Penguins

 

9/20/22 Humboldt penguin, Woodland Park Zoo

At a recent visit to the Woodland Park Zoo, we got an unexpected treat: We arrived at the Humboldt penguin exhibit just as the keeper was about to feed them. The penguin exhibit had been closed for a while due to avian virus risks, so it was good to see the birds again.

Surprisingly patient and orderly, the penguins slowly and quietly surrounded him as he held a bucket of herrings. Calling each by name, the keeper fed them individually to make sure each got one and wasn’t hogging more than its share. Some of the names I heard were Merlin, Groucho, Domingo, Diego, Chewie and Fiona. He seemed to be taking attendance, and when most had been fed, he looked around for ones he knew he had missed, calling for them.

I recognized John, the keeper, from a 2016 visit, when newly hatched flamingoes were the main attraction. I’m sure it’s not all fun and glamour, but it’s hard not to have at least a little envy for someone who gets paid to cuddle flamingo chicks and knows members of the large penguin flock by name.

A couple other zoo residents I sketched: orangutan and Malayan tapir.

Patiently waiting for herrings from keeper John. They must know they don't have to rush him because their names will be called when it's their turn!

An Afternoon at the Zoo

8/3/15 ink

By this point in the summer, I normally would have visited Woodland Park Zoo several times, but for whatever reason, it’s been off my radar this year. I had heard that the temperature would only get up to about 80 today (instead of 90 the last couple weeks), so it was a good day to spend some quality time with animals.

Although the sketch doesn’t look like much, I was especially tickled to catch the Asian small-clawed otters all piled up in a community nap. Every other time I’ve seen them, they were chasing each other like squirrels – impossible to sketch! The two-toed sloth was another animal I’d never sketched before (my goal is to sketch every type of animal at Woodland Park at least once).

8/3/15 ink, colored pencil

Whenever I get frustrated by animals that walk off before I can finish, I take a walk through the Family Farm petting zoo, where the goats and sheep are usually lethargically chewing cud – probably the easiest of all zoo critters to sketch. And although I’ve sketched the hippo several times before, she’s impossible to resist.

8/3/15 inks

8/3/15 inks

8/3/15 inks