Polar Bear Play and more zoo sketches

Pitt Big Brush Pens in a Stillman & Birn 6x8" Delta

Our sketch group was back at the Bronx Zoo on Thursday. It was a spectacularly warm day, so we spent much of the time finally being able to sketch comfortably outdoors. We weren't the only ones with the idea to visit the zoo on that beautiful day; that was the most crowded I've seen it all winter! We started out with the Polar Bear. I'd been wanting to sketch him for so long, and this seemed my best opportunity, since he was outside. He was engaged in his morning rest, but did keep moving and looking around --- not nearly as still as our figure models in life drawing! One thing about drawing animals is that you realize that even though you thought the poses in life drawing were way too short, at least the models don't move much once they assume their pose!

I went past the Polar Bear again later in the day on my way back to the car. He was swimming in his deep pool, diving, splashing, and playing with pool toys! Who knew that Polar Bears would play like that? He'd throw them up in the air and chase them under the water. It was very entertaining to watch.

From there we went over to Jungle World to see what was there. Even though we've gone several times this winter, we never went there. Well, that is the greatest place to sketch!!!

 

The gorgeous black panther was lying on a thick log in his exhibit, which gave me a chance to examine that huge paw that he left stretched downward over the limb. The Malayan Tapir was in the exhibit just across from him, and I'd never seen one of those before. They have fabulous shapes to sketch. There was so much in this exhibit to draw, but since it was indoors, I felt it would be best to save it for cold or rainy weather, and I ventured back outside.

 

 

The deer in this herd didn't stay still for long. Even the ones lying down shifted position frequently, plus they were far away and hard to see well. I tried to capture some gestures though, and study the way they move and are put together.. I'd brought binoculars with me, but found that they are really impractical. By the time you look through them, find your subject and focus, the subject has moved on.

I love sketching camels. Like giraffes, I find they have fascinating, expressive faces. I did a quick portrait sketch of this one, and was about to start another when we were asked by the zoo staff to move. They were trying to move one of the camels from the enclosure into a building, and didn't want anybody to become a victim of a recalcitrant camel, so I only have this one to show.

All in all, it was another great day at the zoo! When I get home, I look at my photos and always wish I'd taken more. I get so absorbed in my sketches that I forget to take photos.

Review of the Hero 86 Fountain Pen and some Vulture Sketches

 

Iroshizuku Yama-Guri ink in a Hero 86 "Fude" nib fountain pen

 

I'd been hearing about these "fude nib" fountain pens for quite some time. The nib is bent upward so that by writing with it at different angles, you can vary the width of the line. I tried to get photos, but my camera just isn't good enough to capture the details on the nib. In searching online for a link so that you could see some images, I came across this review of the same pen, which has excellent photos to accompany it, so you can check it out there.

A friend tipped me off to a seller who had them on Ebay for $5, so I figured for that price I couldn't go wrong. (That seller is now sold out, but they are available through http://isellpens.com .) I did my usual soapy water -- clean water flush and dry, and inked it up the next evening with Iroshizuku Yama-Guri ink, which is a nicely-flowing ink in the brown family. Using the end of the nib, I was able to get an extremely fine, yet still wet line. It was a great pen/ink combination for quick, thin-lined wirey gesture sketches of this vulture. I did them from photos I'd taken that day at the Bronx Zoo, since I didn't have enough time to sketch them on location. In addition to that wonderful fast, juicy, thin line, I was able to then lay the broader area of the tip down to get in my dark shaded areas and accents. In fact, I loved the pen so much that I buzzed through five pages of sketches and then went right to my computer to order the only three that the Ebay seller had left.

The pen is rather heavy, and you may or may not like that "rocket ship" look! It does come with a converter, so it's very easy to fill. I've also been told that the nib for this pen will fit on a standard Noodler's Flex Pen or a TWSBI! Although I do have both of those, I haven't yet tried it. So if you don't like the pen body, there are other options, and it might be worth it for the nib.

If you like to sketch with fountain pens, this is definitely one that you'll want to check out. Sailor also makes these types of fude nib fountain pens at reasonable prices. I've been playing with a couple of the Sailors over the past day or so too. I'm certainly becoming a fan of this type of nib.

Bronx Zoo Trip

You can click this image for a larger view
Pitt Big Brush Pens (Raw Sienna and Nougat) and Pilot Petit1 fountain pen with Private Reserve Copper Burst ink
Page backgrounds and borders prepared in advance with diluted acrylics
Stillman & Birn 6x8" Delta wirebound sketchbook

I made another rather quick trip to the Bronx Zoo yesterday to get in some animal gesture practice and quick sketches. The giraffes are so much easier to sketch in their winter habitat. They are closer and don't move around as much as they do out in the big field, so I'm able to do some studies of things like hooves that are hard to even see without binoculars when they're outside. The pages above were done after several pages of quick studies (a couple of those shown below ---  also clickable to enlarge).

The giraffe all the way on the right must be very old, and had deep skin wrinkles. I loved sketching him.

Cramming animals as tall as giraffes into a 6x8" sketchbook was a challenge, but it sure is convenient to travel with such a small book. Since this is a wirebound book, working across the spread wasn't an option either, but it was nice to have this great super-heavyweight Delta paper, which is not available in a hardbound book.

After spending most of our time with the giraffes, we didn't have much time left. We went to the gorilla house, but couldn't find the gorillas. We did find these cute Wolf's Monkeys (below) in a beautifully laid out exhibit. They moved so fluidly....and constantly! Even getting gesture sketches was a real challenge. I wanted to test drive my new watercolor/gouache setup, so I pulled that out and added some color, then went on to World of Birds and did the same with the Great Blue Turacos, working more directly with color on them.

I love the way my new setup for watercolor and gouache worked out, so tomorrow I'll post about how I reconfigured my palette and show an image.

Giraffes at the Bronx Zoo

Click image for a larger, clearer view

Pitt Pens and Watercolor

Background prepared in advance with diluted acrylic

At the end of the day, we wound up at the giraffe house. They are indoors for the winter in a very comfortable and inviting space. The lighting was good and visibility excellent. I really fell in love with sketching these beautiful, graceful creatures. Aside from the ballet-like way in which they move, they have the most expressive faces, which became the focus of my attention. I want to go back and spend more time with them very soon.

Siberian Tiger at the Bronx Zoo

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Pentel and Pitt Brush Pens

Watercolor

Diluted acrylic background

Fortunately one of the tigers at the zoo was lying on a rock in front of me napping! That gave me a few minutes to sketch an animal who actually stayed still. We made it a very brief stop at this exhibit because with only a lean-to for shelter, we were getting really cold! I did the border, lettering, and watercolor wash after I got home.

Turaco and Macaws at the Bronx Zoo

Click the sketch for a larger, clearer image.

Pentel Aquash Gray brush pen

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen

Watercolor

Pitt Brush Pens

Page background prepared in advance with scumbled and sprayed diluted acrylic paint

This was my second sketch from this week's trip to the zoo, and the last one at the bird house. The Macaws were adorable! They looked like two matching bookends. Hyacinth Macaws are the largest of the Macaw family.

King Vultures at the Bronx Zoo

Click image for a larger, sharper view.

Stillman & Birn Epsilon hardbound 5.5x8.5" book

Pitt Brush Pens

Watercolor

Background prepared with diluted acrylics

I went with my sketch group to the Bronx Zoo yesterday. The weather was pretty nice --- not too cold to walk around a bit. We met up in the morning at the end of the World of Birds exhibit. I'd wanted to sketch these folks the last time we went, but didn't get a chance. I made sure to do it first on this trip! The vultures weren't such cooperative models, but birds generally are not. I loved using the Pitt Brush Pens, and wished I'd had more colors with me. I only brought some warm and cool greys along on this trip. The background had been lightly toned in advance with some diluted acrylic paint, then sprayed with some sparkley iridescent paint. There's a nice shimmer to the page, which isn't evident in the photo.

Usually I do the watercolor work right there on location, and only the lettering/writing at home later, but this time I worked in monochrome on site, using just the different values of the grey pens. I added the few splashes of color back in the studio. I hadn't done it that way for quite some time, and I definitely prefer doing the color work on location also.

Water Birds at the Bronx Zoo

I remembered these red-orange birds from the last time I was at the zoo, so I prepared these border colors in advance and made sure to pack a pen with Noodler's Cayenne ink! I used a combination of the ink, watercolors and gouache on this sketch.

Hornbills and a BIG Pigeon at the Bronx Zoo

Warning: You are probably going to get very sick of teal and turquoise by the time I finish this sketchbook! I have fallen in love with a new ink: Private Reserve Blue Suede. I prepared some acrylic backgrounds and borders specifically to use a few new inks that interest me greatly. The writing in this image was done using my new bottle of Blue Suede. I love it.

To get to this section of World of Birds, you have to actually go outside and back in again. Unlike the area when you first enter the building, where the birds are behind glass, in this zone they are free to fly all around you. When I arrived there, my friend Bernard was already seated and admiring the birds while having his lunch. I set up and started sketching just as one of the Long-tailed Hornbills flew over to Bernard and sat on the railing in front of him, looking longingly at his sandwich. He pulled off a piece, which the Hornbill gratefully accepted and took to a tree limb. Clearly this was not the first time this bird shared lunch with a visitor, because in another minute he went back for more. He had the routine down pat.

Getting back to the sketching part of this trip, I was again fighting with the watercolor due to having put too much acrylic down on the paper. So I pulled out my Pentel Pocket Brush pen to sketch the Hornbills. My those things come in handy! They seem to write on anything, and stay there too! My plan was to do the bird's big white crown with one of those white Sharpie paint pens, but that leaked and made a big mess. Foiled again. I ended up finishing it up with white gouache that I keep in with my little watercolor kit. The gouache did a lot better on the acrylic than transparent watercolor, so I pulled out my tiny gouache kit and used that in conjunction with my mini watercolor kit for the rest of the day. People wonder why I always have so many different options with me. This is why!

Surprisingly, there were no exhibit notes nor identifying information on the hornbill in the middle of this sketch. I looked online after I got home, and it is clearly a hornbill, but even after viewing hundreds of images, I couldn't find one with the yellow around the eye that these guys had. There were at least three or four of them in the exhibit.

The Victoria Crowned Pigeon is the largest member of the pigeon family. She had beautiful muted coloring and never strayed from her nest while I was there.

Birds at the Bronx Zoo

I met with my sketching group in the World of Birds exhibit at the Bronx Zoo. I was especially excited about this trip because I was going back to a Stillman and Birn Epsilon book that I'd only done two sketches in previously, so it was like starting a new book. For awhile I got sidetracked and worked in way too many sketchbooks simultaneously. Finally, I exerted my willpower and narrowed the field, so in the past couple of months, I finished off three of them by consolidating my efforts in one book at a time.

It's been especially hard to let go of the last one I finished --- a Stillman and Birn Alpha hardbound book that I really loved. I did a lot of experimenting and mixed media-growing in that book, and liked what was coming out of it. I wasn't sure where this new Epsilon book was heading. But then I thought about the fact that I treated the Alpha book like a playground. It did well with a mixed media approach and I enjoyed that, so it gave me the chance to grow in that direction. It wasn't long before I remembered how much I love the feel of pen and ink and dry media on this Epsilon surface. I expect that I'll be doing a lot of drawing in the near future!

In the meantime, I prepared about 10 two-page spreads with acrylic washes and borders to see how the paper would respond in comparison to the Alpha. To my surprise, it did just fine. I think I'll not only be able to use a similar approach in this Epsilon book, but I'll like it even more for my dry media.

This page was a bit problematic because I didn't dilute the acrylic paint enough on the background wash, and the transparent watercolor did not want to adhere to the shiny smooth acrylic surface. I fought with the acrylic/watercolor combination a bit on this sketch above. The sketch was done with Noodler's North African Violet ink in a Pilot Plumix italic calligraphy pen. That is a washable ink, and I let it wash into the watercolor at will, and wrote in the species names with the same pen/ink combination.

Two More from the Bronx Zoo

Watercolor, painted across a two-page spread in a 6x8" Stillman & Birn Delta sketchbook. The pages were prepared in advance with diluted acrylic paint.

Giraffes from the Bronx Zoo

Watercolor and ink across a two-page spread in a Stillman & Birn Delta sketchbook. These were sketched at the Bronx Zoo, with the page borders prepared in advance using acrylic inks.

Giraffes are so graceful and fun to sketch. The Bronx Zoo has a nice habitat for them with a shady spot to sit and enjoy their company. While we were sketching them, a peacock came along from the habitat next to them, and they all started following the peacock in a long line, as if playing Follow the Leader.

Flamingos at the Bronx Zoo

Last week I went to the Bronx Zoo with a group of artists. What a great place for a sketching trip! I even took out a membership so that I can go back for free. There is a cafeteria called the Dancing Crane Cafe, which overlooks a pond with beautiful Flamingos. Here are two that were begging to be sketched.

I knew I'd be sketching on the run for the most part, so I prepared some sketchbook pages in advance. This two page spread was done with acrylic ink. I painted the borders with brown, then sprayed it with water while the ink was still wet, and blotted it with a paper towel to further texturize the surface.

This is a Stillman & Birn 6x8" Delta Series sketchbook. I've done several multi-media pages in it of this type, and it's handled all the abuse spectacularly well. It's very heavy paper with a heavy layer of sizing, and not too much texture, so my fountain pens seem to like it as well.