I was at the
Naples Zoo from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm speed sketching cartoon portraits to entertain the families participating in the
Party for the Planet event.
We managed to distribute tons of
ARTScool lunch boxes and registration brochures promoting the summer art classes at
The von Liebig Art Center.
Originally the concept had been to create an entire "
Zoo Town" out of the salvaged cardboard boxes.
Yet the lack of an adequate source of clean water did not really make it feasible to work effectively with paint and brushes at this venue. The closest restroom was like a city block away making clean up of paint rather challenging for family groups. A quick peek at the single available water bucket stained with green algae, convinced us to put the paints away and keep only the markers and dry media on hand.
Given the heat and the enticing animal attractions, none of the kids took up the task of building their own "
Zoo Town" block anyway. Thus this demo tower remained lonely throughout the day. Most kids simply took their coloring sheets to use at home while a few colored their favorite animals while waiting in line to get their portrait drawn.
Spent most of the afternoon speed sketching a bunch of cartoon portraits: a baby on his first birthday, couple of cat kids, fairies with butterfly wings, a few dragon riders, couple of lions and elephant riders, sports players and cheerleader, and several conventional portraits. Both kids and parents seemed very pleased with their pictures (Note to self: still need to research availability of letter size sleeves that could be used to protect finished drawings in future events).
Many of the cartoon portraits had to be drawn from kids wearing face paint expertly applied by another exhibitor in the
Waste Management booth I think (I was not really able to walk around the other exhibitors' displays once I got started drawing). Some kids wanted to be portrayed with their recently acquired feline or
Avatar features, and for the rest I had to extrapolate their likeness by removing the paint applications in my head. It was quite a bit of fun, but I forgot to have a photo taken of myself drawing, so if you have one that you could e-mail me to add to this post it would be much appreciated. Thanks for stopping by.
Learned quite a few facts about giraffes, took tons of photo references at the Naples Zoo, and had quite a pleasant day with family. All in all a Sunday well-spent. Zoo visits can provide tons of opportunities for improving your animal sketching skills and gathering plenty of photo reference material at the same time. The small Moleskine sketchbook is just the right size to carry around for taking a few visual notes during such outings.
The leopards provided some exciting action shots.
Malayan tiger awaiting a treat at the Meet the Keeper show.
Keeper getting close and personal with a gator during feeding time.
Well-fed Florida panther. One of the best features of this zoo, is how close visitors can get to the animals and the glass viewing areas that allow for some picture taking without the wire net in front of them.
Lion getting a meat treat from his keeper.
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