Natural History Sketchbook Tour

   Look up at the animal, then look down and draw as much as you can. Look up look again, look down, draw again as much as you can remember, repeat 350 times, and you might have enough components to 'build' the creature you have been obseving. Starting with still life and landscape painting, I was intimidated for a long time with the idea of drawing and painting things that moved, constantly. I would watch artists sketch in a quick gesture of the animals in a landscape and be amazed at how their few lines would look so much like a sheep or cow or elephant. Although I tried a few times, my animals always turned out looking much more like fantasy creatures, or worse yet like other well known animals that I hadn't been trying to draw. I have had dogs that looked like goats, cats that looked like weasles, and bears that bore a strong resemplance to pigs, but lets not go into that. Suffice it to say, I am not a natural born animal illustrator.

this is the final illustration from last time

   Last year, on the advice of a friend, I took the natural history online course offered by Newcastle University in Australia. A short 6 weeks of very intensive drawing. There I learned easy tricks that have helped me amazingl. Although most of the pages have been shared on social media I thought I would do a quick flip through of my field sketch book today. It begins last year and taking the photos I saw a bit of improvement as it progressed which definitely suprised and delighted me.

 Before I start with the sketch book here are a few of the photos I took in the field:

 And without further ado:

   These are from the first time I did the course:

 These are from this time around:

 Well, thats the lot. Obviously, I drank a lot of tea while drawing these.

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