animal drawings, paintings. anyone?

lovely pictures!
I think that both of your work is lovely - i have just gotten into art, and love the movement in your work vivian, and the delicacy of kita's two pictures. I tend to prefer Vivains style, aulthough that is just my personal taste - any tips??

Thank you kitten



well, here's my two pennyworth of advice then - I did my drawings from life, which meant using something that you could get marks down fast with.

I used charcoal at the zoo to draw the orang utans, giraffes (incredibly difficult as their faces are so complex!) and the gorillas. It was winter so i could get close as they were in the indoor part of their enclosures for warmth so i was literally inches from them.

With charcoal you can change it as necessary with just a brush of your hand to erase (I get filthy when drawing as you can imagine ). I don't fix it until it is complete. Not all your drawings will work as the animals may not return to the same position enough for you to finish a sketch, so i keep several on the go, working back into each as they go back to the same position. You are learning more about their character, bone structure, movements, characteristics etc though by working this way.

With charcoal i also always have an ink rubber (must be the hard grey ink rubber - putty rubbers IMO are useless things!) and then you can draw clear white marks through the charcoal to put lights back in.

The sketches of Rosie (my cat) were really fast, done with watercolour (I was in the middle of another painting but just grabbed my sketchbook to have a go) so they aren't finished pieces but they do get something of her character.

If you have a dog or cat they are a perfect model as you know them so well - just draw them again and again, thinking about the bone structure under the fur so that they are 3 dimensional. Sleeping animals are best to start with as you have a bit more time.

I absolutely love charcoal to work with as it has such a huge variety of marks - thin delicate lines, broad dark lines, patches of colour, smudges, clear hard marks - it can do them all.

I hope something here is helpful - good luck - post your results?

Viv! Fun to hear your love of your craft(art). Your energy and enthusiasm are infectious. I'd love to accompany you on location at the zoo. The chimps and monkey-types love the attention and many seem to know that somethings up! It would be fun to see your stuff.
With your online and digital dabbling do you ever think you might string together a showing of your recent or your favorite work? I'd love to see your stuff.
I remember the stimulation of drawing classes as a pictorial student at UCLA ages ago...and the spontanaety and sheer fun we had back then. Your message brings back all that enjoyment. Thank you.
(Your Dunnet quote is dear. Who wrote the line about the fog sneaking in on kittens feet?)

thanks for the nice comments.


I can't think who wrote the fog/kitten's feet poem but i know the one you mean - maybe someone from literature would know - i tried googling it and came up with all sorts of stuff but not that one, one was likening kittens feet to raspberries held in the hand

you can see my work if you look in my profile - my web address is there - we aren't allowed to have links, shame as while i did my rating was much higher!

Do you still draw and paint?

today's drawing (a potential Christmas pressie for my dad)


mainly charcoal with a bit of watercolour, ink and white pastel. I wanted the only colour to be in Rosie - she was playing in a white carrier bag full of newspapers (from a photo)

our cats love to hide in paper bags too that's very nice, you really captured the spirit...especially in the eyes. it looks upside down, though?

no she was upside down, playing and scrabbling about - she calmed down after a while and eventually went to sleep in there! she has a passion for bags and boxes and simply cannot resist diving into them.

I've done another drawing of the next stage - when she is playful her eyes are round and her whiskers bristle forwards, in the next image she's calmed down and it is just before she fell asleep - her eyes are almond shaped and she has a sweeter expression.

When she's in the mood she's in above she's all tooth and claw

I'll post the other drawing soon.

this is her settling down a bit - the eyes go almond shaped, rather than the round owly eyes she has when she's excited, she fell asleep there a couple of minutes later

I haven't drawn from life in ages, I dislike zoos too much... things tend to lodge in my mind and I get strange surrealist murmurings instead.
Never was very good at long poses in life drawing classes... 3 hours of cross hatching a model, give me five minute or less gesture drawings any day.

Lovely, lovely drawings of Rosie, Vivien.

Here's the poem (Carl Sandburg) (I thought it was T.S. Eliot!):

FOG

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

if only I could think of things like that...

Yes, zoos make me uncomfortable as well - this one has a good reputation for endangered species.

The series I did on the gorillas and orang utans were used later as a basis for a project I did for a group show - there were several paintings in the local gallery that we could use as a starting point and I chose a Kathy Kollowicz etching of refugees and a Franz Marc. I used the refugee theme as there was such a strong feeling of this displacement and loss as I drew them in their heated enclosures on a cold February day - the orang utan had wrapped an old sheet around herself to keep warm and the gorilla had a real 'attitude'. I used the heightend expressive colours of Marc and themed the series on loss.

I can't be doing with cross hatching either! I like charcoal for its speed and painterliness and wonderful expressives potential. I draw fast as well.

How about a thread with your work benconservato?



Soz - thank you for finding that poem - isn't it beautiful?

Well, that is an example of the type of work that I do at the moment...
crazy animals and birds

wow - very different ways of working - I like the collage with the different textures and paint, I don't use collage enough.

I became enamoured with the leaves everywhere and decided to use them.
I am only, perhaps three months into trusting my drawing skills again, freehand, no photos.

I decided to do a painitng of the new kitten, Paddy, today - here is the result:

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it was a real struggle as he's totally black, even his whiskers.

he is fabulous - I suspect he was moving around too!

I agree, fabulous. There's quite a sense of self embedded in that face; vigorous, warm, magnetic painting.

Did you use pastels?

I cheated! it was from a photo which I put on the computer screen - he's totally incapable of keeping still when he's awake!