Drawing as an Act of Deep Appreciation

This week featured many more gesture sketches of animals, two finished drawings, and a spiritual experience when looking at a tortoise… let me explain how I got here.

I am in a graduate life drawing class, and last weekend we went over to our local zoo to draw animals from life. I wasn’t sure what to expect, as I knew I’d have to work quickly. However, I definitely was not expecting to be emotional as I drew all the different animals.

What other activity forces you to sit down and truly observe something? To account for each curve and contour, each feature that makes it so unique? Not only that, but observing something that’s living and breathing, and oftentimes, looking right back at you!

As I sat down in front of a large tortoise to draw him, I was struck by how incredible a creature he was, and how each part of him was crafted by God. As I drew each contour and had all of these thoughts about how miraculous life is, he started looking at me and walking closer! It really just felt like two of God’s creations enjoying each other’s presence.

Another creature I was fascinated by was the kookaburra bird. He had such a funny personality and kept ruffling his own feathers and chirping at us. I knew I would absolutely love to draw him and continue rendering.

My initial gesture sketch of him was admittedly quite rough, as I just mainly wanted to capture the pose. I ended up changing the pose to strengthen the composition and direct the viewer’s eye up to the eyes. From the bottom feather to the beak, the composition creates a nice S-curve instead of a straight diagonal line like my gesture sketch.

As I was rendering, I wanted to make the feathers toward the bottom of the composition look as though they were moving, so I kept edges loose and less rendered. As I continued to render in my studio, I kept remembering the mannerisms and personality of this bird. By just creating a 1.5 hour impression of him in paper, I felt like I appreciated this creature at a deeper level.

Kookaburra. Charcoal. 9×12

For my other sketch, I used one of my gestures of a pronghorn antelope from last week. I really liked this sketch for its simplicity, and how wide-set and bulbous the eyes were. While I played this up a bit in my gesture sketch, I did not want my rendered drawing to feel exaggerated. I observed the original animal a bit more and saw some areas I had gotten inaccurate in my initial sketch.

As I began rendering, I found myself considering what makes this animal so unique that I can emphasize through my use of value contrast. This is something that the gesture sketch aided with. I noticed that the outer contour of the right eye was so wide and round, that I decided to make this my area of maximum value contrast. Also, the way his nose curved downward was something that caught my eye.

The eye area of this creature is so unique, as it almost reminds me of several characters from Star Wars. Ordinarily, I might’ve just overlooked this. But since I took the time to draw him and consider each and every feature, I learned to appreciate the beauty on a deeper level.

Charcoal ended up being the perfect medium for this animal, as its fur was quite coarse and dense. The natural textures of this medium allowed me to convey the texture without overrendering. The goal was to capture the feeling of this animal, and to not create a perfect replica.

Pronghorn Antelope. Charcoal. 9×12.