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Observation Animal Drawings from the Zoo 5/30 by Ifus

Observation Animal Drawings from the Zoo 5/30

Ifus

I didn't get to scanning these til today but I went to the local zoo with   rhia to do some observational drawing last week. Doing observational drawing from real life and using photos for reference on real animals helps your stylized artwork! It's a tool that all professionals and studios use when researching design and so they can learn to properly depict the creatures they want to show. Even fantasy creatures have some sort of research based on living creatures going into them.

I've gotten a few notes of artists looking for advice and I strongly advise each time to look up reference when drawing animals and taking a day to go out to a zoo if you have one close to you and do some gestures and sketches. Some animals will stay still, others you will need to capture glimpses of motion (gestures) to get the movement down. I did that a lot with the meerkats and otters, they were very active when I went that day.

A personal note that I have learned is that I need to really step back when drawing larger animals unless I want to detail a specific part. But for gestures and getting down shapes, I need to see the whole thing to get it down, then you move closer. I drew a bull that was really close to the fence, and I kept messing up my proportions because I was just too close to understand the whole picture.

I hope my personal notes and postings can help some of you! I'm also considering making up pdfs of hi-res versions of my observational drawings including my daily figure drawings I have been doing. Would anyone be interested if I made pdfs of art tutorials and of my drawings with notes? I probably would make a patreon for it so folks can donate and receive the volumes as I make them. The funds would go towards my student loans and paying for more time to make more tutorials featuring what I have been taught through school, my internship, and my game/packaging art experience.

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