HowToDrawWildLife.Com

When I go to the zoo to photograph animals for my reference I go with an open mind with the intent to photograph the animals, as I would imagine them living in their natural habitat.

While the animals at the zoo are not living in their natural habitat I look for some extra help from books and the Internet to inspire me to create the environment and even the ‘mood’ of that environment through the use of colour in order to create a ‘whole’ drawing.  I usually mix and match several references until I come up with the right background and/or foreground while much of the time my imagination comes into play, particularly with clouds and leaves.

However, sometimes ‘less is more’ where I use very little background or foreground if I am focusing more on the animals face. In this case I am intending to draw the viewer to the animals eyes in order to aspire a connection with its soul. If the actual animal takes up more space on the page I tend to show just a hint of its natural environment like some long grass in front of some lions for instance.

Most of the time I have a fairly set idea of how I would approach the background or foreground yet sometimes it turns out completely differently as I work along.

With my “Gentle giants” that I photographed at the Western Plains zoo, initially I was to draw them showing a typical African day with the full sun shining but it just wasn’t working. Something within me inspired me to draw clouds. I trusted this ‘voice within’ and ended up with a unique drawing that portrayed their natural habitat yet with a different mood that complimented the elephants perfectly.

After many years of drawing I now approach each drawing with a completely open mind and trust my creativity to guide me. In life I’ve learned that sometimes my biggest ‘mistakes’ turn out to be my biggest ‘gifts’.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 1:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.