Finding Life in Still Animals

He was a punk rocker, no question about it. Cracked me up.

This porcupine didn’t come easily. Leaving the Black Barn Studio last Saturday, he was my least favorite drawing.  Not today — I love him.

A pose that’s held — a pose that’s made

I have plenty of experience with life drawing from human models.  Drawing dead animals, not so much.  I’d look for the overlaps.

A model holds the pose for a short time.  The artist draws quickly to capture the story, emotion, and energy before the pose changes.  That hunch of the shoulders, tilt of the head, or tension in the reach.

That’s what I would do with the animals.

Bring the same attention to these intangibles, and I’d surely see life.

Inside Black Barn, people were already spread out in front of dioramas of taxidermy specimens and tables full of animal skulls. Pencils busy in their sketchbooks, rendering anatomical structure and textures.

I walked past pinned butterflies and insects under glass and climbed the stairs. More taxidermied birds and mammals mounted on stands and walls.

Would I find life in these?

I unpacked my drawing gear as if indeed I would.

I had decided to work big and fast — so many animals, so little time.  I had armed myself with large 18x24 paper, blue and orange pan pastels, charcoal, and colored pencils. A medium-sized toned sketchbook.  Not at all the supplies of a scientific illustrator.

I turned my attention to discovering life’s intangibles.

First up, the raven.  By the second drawing, I began to see it. Stockier, more jaggy silhouette. Longer, more curved bill.  This guy exuded ponderous and tentative — not what I expected from Poe’s “grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore … croaking ‘Nevermore.’” But surely a different vibe than my usual crows.

Next, the javelina.   Despite his warm colored coat, I preferred drawing him in dark blue.  Scratchy charcoal and swipes of the pan pastel gave shape to the menacing posture and those teeth ready to snap.

Then there was the porcupine.  If I had to introduce you on stage, what would I say?    Punk rocker.

Last up, the alligator head and the I-didn’t-catch-your-name bird.  Quick passes.  It was all about the teeth and the gleam in the alligator’s eye, and the tiny beak pinched onto the bird’s head.

And time was up.

Back home, I looked at my drawings together as a group.

In the studio, I tacked up the taxidermy drawings next to a few recent figure drawings. 

Together on the whiteboard, the drawings began to look related.

With the human model, the figure fades in and out of the moodiness of the first layer. A 1960s portrait quality. Energy in the marks.

The raven, the javelina, the porcupine, the alligator head, and the unnamed bird.  Same colors and technique.  Same attention to story, energy, and attitude.

Did the practice of paying attention to the intangible translate to dead animals?

Yes, well enough.

What’s next?

More of the same. Speed and rhythm. Find the emotion and story in the pose before focusing on the details. Human model, animal model — the approach still works. Some life comes through. I want to keep following that.

Links:

Black Barn Fine Art Studio — Art Education — Animal Drawing Studio

BARN, Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network — Drawing and Painting Studio — Live Figure Drawing