Andi Pasti's Animal Art - Comics and Drawings

A few weeks ago I signed up for an online drawing session with wildlifedrawing.co.uk. A few times a year I attend these along the in-person ones. They provide a comforting space where you can unwind, draw and learn more about a particular animal. And you will leave more inspired and uplifted after each session. This time it was about the hairy-nosed otter, for me a welcome change to the more familiar and better known Eurasian otter. Hairy-nosed otters are home in South East Asia, where they sadly get victimised by poachers and habitat loss. These otters are so rarely sighted that we don’t know a lot about them and they are considered endangered by the IUCN. Instead of a pencil, our instructor Jennie used a brush ink pen, after the work of  Charles Tunnicliffe‘s wood carvings. I haven’t drawn with ink in a long time traditionally too. I am quite satisfied with the result. Unfortunately otters are often kept as pets, especially the small short-clawed otter in Southeast Asia. The ille...

I realised that it’s more than a year ago when I uploaded issue #1 of Woolly Wonderful. And maybe have too. My original plan was to work the rest of the story out and jump on issue #2 soon after. In summer '24 I drew an illustration of Woolly on a rabbit to try a new page process to simplify and speed up my drawing. The drawing was uploaded in an earlier blog post. In preparation for the plot creation I've read Lisa Cron's book Wired for Story  which is indeed an excellent book and an inspiration when crafting a story. The book itself is a page-turner, high recommendation from me, though I am not affiliated with that link. But not a lot of progress has been made I have to admit. After working a long time digitally I felt the urge to finally draw with pencil and paper again. Which I did with my animal advent calendar and left me no time for working on Woolly. At the beginning of this year I signed up to contribute to this year's WIP Comics anthology. Apart from moving in...

I am contributing a comic to this year’s anthology of my comic group. Over 60 creators around the UK will contribute to another magnificent book. The theme of the current book is infinity/loop, so comics will cover anything about infinite repetition and variety. We are running a kickstarter to crowd fund the book and there are less than 10 days left. If you are interested into indie comics and want to support us, please consider backing the project. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mike-armstrong/the-new-wip-comics-anthology Thank you, Andi Pasti

Hey, Exciting news!  WIP comics is a community of comic creators around London (and further) who support each other in finishing their comic ideas and finding ways to promote their work or find opportunities to collaborate with writers, artists and publishers. They have been creating an anthology book every year for 7 years now.  I have signed up to contribute a Comic this year. The book is currently in the making and will be sold from November on at the Thoughtbubble convention and online. The preliminary cover, subject to change 60 people will contribute comics around the theme infinity. That means loads of different art styles and interpretations of this year’s theme. If you want to support the project, head over to kickstarter, follow the project and back it when it launches. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mike-armstrong/the-new-wip-comics-anthology Thanks for reading, see you soon! Andi Pasti

Have you watched the dinosaur show "Chased by dinosaurs" with Nigel Marven, a TV program from 2002?  It was made in the aftermath of "Walking with dinosaurs", which was a huge success in the realms of paleo-documentaries. This time, instead of being a serious documentary, it uses a time-travel approach. It features the wildlife presenter Nigel Marven running around in real locations in search for dinosaurs. Well, and what is hilarious is, he gets frequently too close to these supposedly dangerous animals. In real life, you wouldn't probably do that. So that's why I had to make a parody (and admittedly I had enough spare time). (Click on the image to view a bigger version) What is even more exciting for me, I met Nigel Marven years later at a Tetzoocon in 2023, report here:  https://tetzoo.com/blog/2023/12/15/tetzoocon-2023-the-report Nigel was nice enough to stay around and talk with people, but there was such a huge queue that I couldn't have been bothe...

A few of my brain cells worked together and came up with a little, funny animal comic about a hunting cheetah (see more posts about animals ). I think as inspiration I can blame the Keeper Chat podcast where I learned about some interesting cheetah facts that are rarely mentioned in documentaries. Enjoy! I have been dreaming a while now about writing about animals and our relationship or misconceptions about them. But who reads blogs nowadays anyway, huh? So I tried to keep short, funny and a bit educational. Maybe, maybe this is the start of a new project. Is there an animal and a behaviour you would like to see in a comic? Fancy another funny comic? Click here . Or have you read my greatest art achievement yet ? Thanks for reading and till next time, Andi Pasti

How is it end of February already? I didn't get to update the final of the Animal Advent Calendar as I became more overwhelmed right before Christmas and needed to stop. On top of that, I got sick for a few weeks in January. Learning to draw animals is challenging For a long time it was my desire to draw animals. But with so many shapes and forms it is an immense undertaking to tackle them all, if not impossible. I bought several books and did numerous live drawings. But with live drawings you might often feel overwhelmed because your animal models don’t hold still how you like it. The easiest indeed were reptiles and by chance sleeping piglets, which I could have done a blog post about (darn). Books present a calmer and self directed way of learning. And I did start off with books and some generic body plan drawings, feet and hands. But it’s not the most fun way. And you need a lot of discipline to get through a book. At which it again feels a bit like work.  Animal research and d...