Challenges of drawing animals

The main challenge of drawing animals, for me, is being able to draw sufficiently quickly. Unfortunately, too, I am not in possession of a pet although I did manage to borrow one for a few hours only. This was the dog belonging to my neighbours. He is a Jack Russell terrier and I found it difficult to draw him as he is constantly alert. In watching him, I decided that his ears were key to his behaviour in some way as they were constantly moving even when the rest of him was quite still. Anyway, I tried a few sketches but was not able to complete the final piece of work on large paper as I couldn't spend more time with him.

 

                                                          Sparky

Knowing that horses are in a nearby field I went there but they were some distance away except for one whom I photographed to produce the drawing that I later did at home. Finally, I decided to 'copy' some of the drawings by Ambrus in the set text. 

His drawings are full of character and I admire the way he captures the essence of them with so few strokes. Also, I tried to draw our garden squirrel. However, at some distance away he was quite small drawn 'sight size' and I felt unable to enlarge the size as I was not sufficiently confident in what the shapes might be.

 

 

Fish on a plate.

For this I looked at the fish counter regularly. I bought a rainbow trout and sketched it with its mouth open- I pushed putty into its mouth to keep it open. Looking at this way I thought how much like a reptile it looked. The colours were amazingly varied and depending on the light source changed.

For the final picture I decided upon mackerel.

 

I tried the composition in portrait and finally decided upon landscape format. Having looked at many 'fish' paintings I wanted to try to inject some 'life' into the fish - and that's why I tried the 'open mouth' approach but whether I succeeded is another matter. However, I like the colour palette in this drawing which I did with colour pencil. The onion at the rear is probably too intense a colour as I was trying to keep it more to the colour on the fish themselves.  Many still lifes from the past succeed in really strong, dark backgrounds and I like the richness of these old paintings but I am unsure as yet how to successfully draw this in and recognise that I am, perhaps, playing safe with background colour by keeping it fairly neutral.

 

There are, of course, many places to draw animals. The zoo comes to mind but also Natural History museums as well as farms. When I get a spare day I will try to do more animal drawings as I feel that I've merely touched a tiny surface.