Parc Merveilleux...Encore Encore!

Another trip to Parc Merveilleix, that's once every month since August! Not too shabby! Ill see how cold it is in November before I promise to go back again.

Spent more time drawing animals I usually skip. And I didnt even see the crocodiles before! Guess that shows how good natures camouflage design is.

Oh, and possibly some bad news. The raccoon closure *seems* to have gone from 3 guests to 2...Shakers was nowhere to be seen. Stay tuned for news in November :(

Parc Merveilleux...Encore!

Another trip to Parc Merveilleux in Luxembourg for more animal drawing practice. Been doing some more Mike Mattessi studies on his WEBSITE which helped me loads on this trip. Possibly developing an obsession with raccoons! They have 3 there, I call them Fatty, Shakers and Number 3. Shakers is really old and walks kind of funny, he is my favourite!

Parc Merveilleux - Luxembourg

Last weekend I went to a local animal park (not technically a zoo...I dont know why) and I wasnt expecting much but it was actually brilliant!!! A cracking array of animals on show. My favourites were probably the Raccoons, they were so sweet, in particular a really old one who couldnt quite walk straight and sporadically feel over. So CUTE!

Hopefully Ill make a few more trips there before the weather turns mean and then try making some characters from my studies. Im thinking the Emus could be really fun. So keep coming back to see how that goes!

Animal drawing has always been a weak point of mine, so any pointers or comments would be greatly appreciated!

Going to the Zoo

Bit of an unusual post for me this evening. In preparation for going to this 'zoo' (it's more like a small animal park, no lions or tigers or bears, oh my) weekend because the sunshine has finally come to Luxembourg this summer, I like to be a bit of a drawing nerd and research animal anatomy and do artist studies as a starting point and get myself into the mind frame for drawing. I know that there will be parrots at the zoo this weekend, so after reading Mike Mattesi's new FORCE book on animals drawing, I did some sketches and also tried doing character sketches like the ones above. Ill scan in my other with my results from Saturday's session.

Kitty!

Back to animal studies, this time I was trying to bring more elements of design into the studies as well as some character but unforunately for me, alot of character comes through the expression in the face and I cant even draw human faces yet nevermind animals ones! So that is my next hurdle I guess!

I know some of these tigers look crippled but I promise no animals were hurt in the making of these images. They have just suffered from bad draftsmanship.

Animal Studies: Cats

Todays study was of cats. Bloody hell! They ARE still as difficult to draw as I remember! No great stuff came out today but I definitely felt an improvement from my first sketch to the last one.