Gone Zooin'

Ah! Another adventure drawing naked things with Jenny Goldberg, my new goth-hipster homegirl from the fancy pants part of town. This time they weren't even humans! We went to the L.A. Zoo and stood in the hot sun drawing as many cool critters as we could. Turns out after 6 hours of drawing, we got kicked out because the zoo closed at 5. We had barely scratched the surface of animal nudity. So, this is the L.A. Zoo sketch safari, chapter one. We had a lot of fun, even though are flesh did get charred in the sun. My arms are all red an pomegranety.

OK. Well, the first thing we came to were the Meerkats. Jenny, with her fancy-pants iPhone, snapped this picture and twitpic'd it whilst we were at the zoo. Ah, technology. It was right there then now it's right there just like magic! Well now it's right here...



Here is a clearer, crisper, tastier version with marshmallows.



So then we moved on to the Flamingos. Or, simply "the Mingos." Did you know they're pink because they eat so many shrimp? I did! I decided to draw a serious one, then a knee slapper one. The knee slapper ended up being one of my favorite drawings of the day. Here is the twit-pic:



Now here she is in all her shrimpy pinkish glory:



Ah yes. So, next we drew an alligator, and the damn thing would not hold still. My alligator sucked, so I have chosen not to show it here (it also never got finished). But here is Jenny's gator, posing in front of the actual gator who is swimming away grumbling like an old grumpy gator:



After that we sat in the shade and drew some seals. I tried a few serious, fancy ones... and they just sucked. So I did this happy-retarded-naive seal and it's cute!:



After the seals we went and ate a 6 dollar chicken sandwich, a 9 dollar turkey sandwich, and a 6 dollar soda. Then dumped soda all over our hands, then dumped water all over our hands. After that, we came upon something truly awesome... a Tawny Frogmouth Owl:



I busted out the brown paper on this guy. I think we worked on him for a good hour. He sat right there, sleeping, only moving his head here and there. This, along with the flamingo, is my favorite of the day:



After that, not having known the time, or the hours of the zoo, we continued on to draw these gerenuks, which are awesome and long. Gerenuk means girrafe neck! See! They look like alien deers. There was even little baby ones. About 15 minutes into drawing this guy we got booted out by the Zoo cops. I took it home and finished it up, using a googled gerenuk image for reference:



Most of these are a mix of Prismacolor Verithin colored pencils, Faber-Castell brush pens, a small tipped Copic pen, and a crummy Presto!white-out pen. Also, a bit of photoshopping to add snazz.

I am still giddy! I can't wait for chapter two. Drawing animals is my bread and butter! Thanks for reading.

Ethan