I am rapidly gathering a bucket list of places I want to visit, thanks to these Wild Life Drawing sessions! Seeing the animals and hearing their stories from the passionate people who care for them and facilitate the rescue and rehabilitation is truly inspiring. Knowing that half my ticket price goes to the organisations makes it an easy and thoroughly enjoyable way to support conservation.
I’ve not seen elephants before, apart from the odd distant view at [I think] Chester Zoo many moons ago. Needless to say, captive elephants are a difficult subject but the ones at MandaLao are donated or reduced from logging and tourism – many with harrowing backstories but we must keep in mind the cultural and financial situation of the local population and not apply too many Western ideals to our interpretation.
We started by drawing a wonderful elephant whose name I forget, but she happily stood being fed bananas by Ben, our host. Each elephant has a mahout to look after them and they are free to initiate activities and behave naturally, even though many of them have never been in a herd so feel more comfortable with their mahout.
They are wonderful animals to draw, and it was great to see their trunks and tails up close. they have their toenails filed with an angle-grinder (!) and their molars grow continuously.
I always get enthused by my array of coloured pencils but invariably stick to my Blackwing pencil; they make such a fabulous mark and I love the simplicity. Going across a double spread of my Fabriano sketchbook means I can scribble over and over, getting lines down quickly on the paper and building up muscle memory by repeating shapes.
