humpback

whale with calf

sketched from nature documentary

Tamandu

from the Museum- the animal was posed facing into a termite mound, plus there was an information panel in front of the display case, so it was hard to get a good view of him.

The Tamandu is a small arboreal anteater

wild hogs 2

from the Museum
wild boar

sketched a year ago as well

seahorse

study of the head, side and front

wader

white wading bird on the shore (these were all the same bird, caught in different poses)

odd ones

some strange critters I drew at the Museum of Natural History, animals I'd never heard of before, much less seen or drawn

Pink fairy armadillo I do believe the first one pictured is the exact specimen I drew

Solenodon, a shrewlike creature with a long snout

springhare, an animal in its own family. Its hind feet have very long straight claws.

toddling

still awful at hands...

tall trio

When I look at the pattern on reticulated giraffes, it appears that white lines form the shapes more than the bold spots. I tried three methods here of making the spots. The first giraffe I drew the outlines of the spots, then filled in. The second one I freehanded the shapes with hatching, just eyeballing it. The last one I actually drew lines to represent the white between the shapes, then filled among them. If I'd done the lines with pencil to then erase it, I think that method would have had the best effect.

civet

Another animal I drew a year ago at the Museum of Natural History: African civet

kids

Last night I tried to draw my kids from my own photos. Faces are hard enough to draw, especially when it's someone you know (if you get the least detail wrong, it just doesn't look like them). Children's faces are particularly difficult, at least for me. You work too much on a child's face and it looks awful, needs to stay minimal lines. Well, I did my best and it's a lot better than my last attempt but I still have a long way to go. (It's the mouths that are wrong. If you cover that up and just look at the eyes and top of head, it almost looks recognizable like my kids).

This first I did from a photo taken just a month ago.

the second sketch I did was from when the youngest was five or six months old.

I have to do this more often. There's no other way to get better at drawing people, than to just draw them!

canines

more Museum of Natural History animals
Fennec (I drew this guy last year too):

Maned Wolf:

Silverback Jackal:

Gray Wolf:

Gray Fox and cub:

aquatic mammals

from the Museum of Natural History Manatee and calf:

seals

hippo

wild cats

from the Museum of Natural History. I never noticed this before, but both the Serval and Bobcat have the same pose, leaping after a bird. Serval:

Bobcat:

(the sketchbook I'm using has quotes and pink dots in some corners, so sometimes my drawings accidentally run into those elements!)

antelopes

from the Museum of Natural History,

wildebeest faces:

wild sheep

of the wild sheep, I only sketched two, the head of the argali sheep:

french bulldog

gnus

quick sketch of a gnu, or wildebeest

here's another one I drew several months ago, flat on the ground after being killed by a predator.

brown hyena

quickie, from photo in a book

aardwolf

more quick sketches of a small member of the hyena family, the aardwolf

the tail should be longer, but it ran into another drawing on the same page

referenced from a children's nature book, Hyenas

spotted hyena

these hyena sketches were done very quickly, just a minute or two each, because I was trying to use the book before it had to be returned to the library, and a kid was clamoring at me.

antelope

Some kind of large antelope, I think maybe female Eland?

lizardlike

sketches from a tv program about prehistoric beasts, early lizards that predated the dinosaurs

jackal

vultures

mechanical kakapo

bird

no idea what this bird is but the view of it flying above was interesting- seen on film

ostrich

goofy little sketch