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