The Zooly Art Challenge has got me back in the studio, though my eyesight challenges are still, um, challenging. This week I’ll be getting my other new eye, and hopefully then I’ll be balanced, though there may be further adjustments via glasses needed. In the meantime, I’ve been getting little daily works of art done.

I started out doing another little Moleskine book with animal comics, but after several days of struggling with working that small (the pages are 3.5×5.5 inches) with mismatched eyes, I’ve moved to just doing some sketches in pencil and watercolour, which might be how I go on with the challenge from here. I’ve already posted the Snow Leopard, here’s the rest of the first week:

Who knew that armadillos could be so much fun to draw? They’re like a cross between a dinosaur and a deer! 

Even though I draw lots of cats, for some reason dogs have not been a big theme in my art. But maybe I should draw more of them! These African Wild Dogs were fun.

I couldn’t resist the idea of adaptation to a new habitat here.

This baby orangutan was the first of my alternate sketches. Having never drawn an orangutan before, I thought it would be useful to do a few studies before I started cartooning. I do have a cartoon in mind, but it will have to wait for a bit.

I really love having access to the visual feast of the internet — It takes up way less room than the shelves of musty old National Geographics I used to keep for reference, and it’s way faster to find what I have in mind to draw. Alas, I don’t have an attribution for the photo I worked from. It was from the site Save the Orangutan, though they only use it as their header; here is the photo as it appeared on Google Images for comparison to my drawing. You can see that I took some small liberties in my interpretation.

I’m sure some version of this joke must have been drawn before, but I couldn’t resist. I giggled all the way through drawing it.

Two version of the Cape Buffalo mama and calf; this one is just coloured pencil…

… and this is after I added some watercolour. I actually like the pencil better, though there are some nice bits in this one. 

My Cape Buffalo reference was from an article in the Animal Facts Encyclopedia  — I’m learning so much about all these animals! If you just want to see the image, here’s the link. You may notice in comparing it to my drawing that I didn’t quite capture the massiveness of the mama buffalo; she’s a bit squashed compared to the reference. I’m going to blame that on astigmatism in the eye that is yet to be done — curiously, this illustrates the difference between the current state of my eyes perfectly.

And that’s it for week one of Zooly! I’ll be posting the prompts for the second week tomorrow morning. It’s not too late to join in the fun — for more information, see these posts:

The Zooly Art Challenge — the basics
Zooly Art Challenge Rules — well, more like guidelines
The Zooly Prompts — for those who just can’t wait to see all the fun ahead