22nd Worldwide SketchCrawl Results…

Rain, wind and animals—a perfect day for a Southern Arizona SketchCrawl. Unfortunately only one other artist made it out this morning—too bad too—because it really was a beautiful day to draw. The location chosen was the Reid Park Zoo near downtown Tucson. I focused on sketching the big cats as they are my favorite animals to look at and for some reason I have a tremendously difficult time drawing cats well.

I spent a good deal of time trying to capture the essence of the black Jaguars. They are adorable and make me want to hug them—they’re just big kitties right? OK, no they’re not.



I also got a rare treat of being able to see the tiger up close—only the glass keeping the tiger from reaching me. At one point, the Zoo Caretaker put a large piece of meat in a barrel for the cat effectively hiding it from view. While the tiger was searching for the meat he was pacing a bit as wall as flehming. While standing there trying to draw the tiger, he raised up on his hind legs putting his feet on the glass. He was easily 2 feet taller than me and I’m not a very small person. What a cool day at the zoo it was today.



I also spent some time working on drawing the giraffes and their habitat surrounding.


All images done with sharpie and derwent graphitint pencils.