Above: the is the first page spread I did at Saturday's SketchCrawl. The left hand page has a column of text written before I got to the zoo. I started with a sketch in the center of the right hand page. (There are numbers on the sketches marking the order.) When we got to the Puffins in the Aquatic building they were having a pool party, flapping and diving about. But they did settle down long enough for us to catch a few views.
(Click on any of the images in this post to view an enlargement.)
Yesterday we had a group of 12 people join together for SketchCrawl. (There was also one supportive non-sketching friend who graciously took the photo Ken posted of the group.) Our game plan was to start at 10 a.m. at Como Park Zoo and Conservatory. I was getting out of my car at about 9:50 when Janice spotted me. We walked up together. At about 10:10 we were joined at the entrance by Mary. At 10:18 we decided to take off and let other people find us as they might. We headed off for the Aquatic building where of course there are PUFFINS! Hence the first page spread you see above.
I worked all day with a Staedtler Pigment Liner in my current journal which I made using Nideggen paper. This is a lightweight tan paper, which I love to paint on. I used Schmincke Gouache from a little travel palette (about 1 x 1.5 inches) that I carry around; and a Niji Waterbrush.
I was able to get 5 page spreads completed before leaving the zoo at about 3:50 p.m.
Below are the other 4 page spreads.
In this next spread I'm still working on puffins across the top of the page. I actually started the sleeping puffin sketch on the right hand page while holding up the left hand page because paint was still wet on the previous spread. Beneath the dotted line across the page you'll see PENGUIN sketches I made.
Janice and I then left the Aquatic building and caught up with Mary and bumped into PJ who had been working on her own the whole time. PJ was actually sketching zoo scenes involving people! After taking a bit of a rest and looking over everyone's sketches Janice, Mary, and I headed out to the herbivores. We split up there. Janice and I arrived late to the giraffes. The crowd, drawn by the male's amorous advances on the female, was so large we couldn't sketch. We knew we would be bumped by everyone pushing forward for a good view. We went on to the cats. We stood on one of the overlook decks and looked down into the outside enclosure where one of the male lions was sleeping 30 feet below us. (When people talked, you could see his ear move and catch their conversation.) (That's a piece of Gutenberg paper torn and pasted down into the gutter of my page spread. This is something that was done a week earlier. Something I just dealt with when I got to this spread.)
And then it was lunch time. As planned we met at the zoo's restaurant. This is when Mary, Janice and I learned there were a dozen folks participating! It was a short and funny lunch and then back to more sketching.
I made the mistake of venturing into the Primate house after lunch and it was so packed with people, and there were so many strollers clogging the halls, that I stood still for 5 minutes in one spot until I went rogue and started squeezing between strollers and other stationary folk. I didn't step on anyone's toes, and I got out of there, well, at least on to a less crowded spot where I could sketch gorillas and orangutans.
There wasn't much time left (we had all agreed to leave at 4 p.m. and reconvene at Cafe Latte to share our work). I went through the new tropics section, sketched some fish. With time to spare I had to sit down! I picked a bench that looked towards some banana trees with interesting flowers. I got out my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen for my final sketch of the day (the right hand page of this last page spread).
From the photo Ken posted you can see we all survived!
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