Joe Weatherly Animal Workshop Paris

This week I was lucky enough to spend my time in Paris, at the Jardin des Plantes Zoo, with a group of talented artists, as we were brought together to learn from animal master, Joe Weatherly. 

It was a challenging week!

We had to strip back our animal drawing to the fundamentals, the structure, perpective, weight. All those important things that I sometimes forget about because I'm too keen to make a character design out of them. 

Here's a bunch of sketches from the week. First I've showed the monkeys I drew, to compare how I was drawing before to how I was drawing by the end of the week (and I managed to sneak a bit of character in there too...)

BEFORE:

AFTER:

We also spent a day at the Palaeontology Museum, studying skeletons, which helped the zoo drawing so much! Get down to your local bone museum and do a few hours! It'll help you loads!

 

A study with some notes from Joe on top: 

 

You can see the work of the other folks on the course here:

Trevor White

Shannon Beaumont

Fabian Fernandez

Pierre Rougemont

Mansoureh

 

Big thank you to Joe for coming all the way to Paris to teach us. Ive learned so much and I cant wait to get to character designing some animals using the fundamentals he taught us. 

He's got a load of books on animal drawing, one instructional and 3 that are just inspirational! So check them out at:

joeweatherly.com

 My most recent Weatherly purchase :)