Drawing Baby Sloths

This was another session with Wild Life Drawing, via Zoom from the Jaguar Rescue Center in Costa Rica. The baby sloths were unrelated but of a similar age, and rescued from the ground where they had been apparently abandoned. The Center do their best to find the mother of ‘dropped’ babies by recording the cry of the infant and playing it in the area where the baby was found, in the hope of recalling the mother, but sadly that had not worked in this instance.

The babies sit on soft-toy sloths and other teddies as they hate being touched or handled. They are being fed the same leaves that they will find in their eventual rehoming site so that they recognise them and can therefore feed themselves.

The sessions are such a wonderful blend of gentle drawing and fascinating facts, and for me it is a fabulous way to support charities doing good work for conservation. Wild Life Drawing researches their co-hosts thoroughly and 50% of the ticket proceeds goes to the organisation providing the ‘models’.

For my drawing I used Lyra Super-Ferby, Derwent Drawing and Faber-Castell coloured pencils in my Fabriano sketchbook.

It was difficult to get their shiny, melted milk chocolate noses across with pencil, and it was a bit tricky at times to show the sloth rather than the teddy, but it was great fun and I wrote lots of notes.