Drawing Animal Characters
Oct 22, 2022
This drawing project was inspired by two key arty folk that I am a regular follower of. The first is Art teacher Art Room Britt. I am always inspired by the amount of artwork that comes out of her studio! Her students created beautiful animal creatures in their pen and line illustration unit.
The other inspiration came from the illustrator and graphic designer Indi Maverick.
Her use of line to create tone and texture of all things furry became a focus for this unit. It was also a great opportunity for students to turn to practicing artists/designers for research and to see how their artworks can be applied in industry.
We then began creating our own bank of mark making techniques using the fine liner by completing the worksheet below. Throughout this exercise, discussing words used to describe the use of line and texture samples created were noted down (anything to squeeze in some extra vocab!). I have used this worksheet in another mark making assignment – Drawing Mr Fox – you can find here.
Students then selected an animal based on the photos I provided. This saved time researching their own, as I was very specific about the quality of photo I wanted to provided. Black and white images, with high contrast and strong evidence of texture worked best. The photos I provided are below.
Next students sketched an outline of their animal (A4 size), some traced. We separated the animal face into sections to highlight the areas of dark, medium and light tones. This gave students a guide on where to apply tone. Carefully noting the direction of line strokes to mimic fur by drawing tiny arrows was another good tip we figured out along the way.
By referring to their bank of mark making samples, students applied their textures. Before they started some made mini samples of their texture on a separate page, some just went straight in.
We finished off with giving our animal characters a geometric sweater, rendered using colour pencil.
I was so impressed with the outcomes in this project! The building of mini tasks prior, having excellent visual examples and artist inspiration I think made this project a real success.
It was clear the creativity was flowing the entire time from beginning to end. So we added a little extra opportunity for students to name their character and give them a story.
