Andi Pasti's Animal Art

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...

In January and February I attended live drawing sessions organised by Wildlifedrawing.co.uk . That was actually a lucky find, since I love animals and they are probably the most interesting topic to draw (for me). And it allowed me to engage in a group of people mesmerised and amazed by our wild muses. The first session was handling rescued reptiles consisting of a tortoise, corn snake, leopard gecko, bearded dragon and a green iguana named Deano who loved a good scratch. Honestly, he really enjoyed being petted and scratched. Usually I start a drawing too small, so this time I started sketching big which was quite the wrong approach. Considering you want to catch the form and appearance of moving animals, it’s probably best to  make small sketches, so you don’t need to move your pencil too far enough. One abandoned sketch I did want to finish as a proper drawing then in the following week after the session. Drawing all the scales was quite time intense, so I learned to appreciate ...