drawing hippos

with Tim Pond and Wild Life Drawing

Oooh this was an odd one. Fun, but strange. Tim Pond is a well-known wildlife illustrator, and he was hosting the online class this evening. Normally Jennie or Laura (both experienced illustrators themselves) lead the session, but tonight, Jennie was on standby while Tim gave us the benefit of his drawing wisdom, which is extensive and accomplished.

The odd thing is, I don’t want to draw brilliant renditions, and while I found it really interesting to watch Tim’s process, and he is undoubtedly an inspiring teacher, I found myself feeling itchy and cross about having to follow someone else’s guidelines, and felt that rather awkward combination of wanting to do my own thing but also recognising that my own thing was going to be scrappy and unimpressive against the work of someone far better at draughtsmanship – particularly animals – than me. I don’t mean to sound petulant, but it’s always difficult to stand tall and proud of one’s work, however enjoyable it might be to do, and however pleased one is with the outcome, in the face of someone who is just basically better by any normal metric. Tim is an educator, and his main priority is getting young people into art of any type: architecture, illustration, animation, film, and graphic design rather than focussing only on fine art, and that is such a worthwhile pursuit, and I really hope his methodology and teaching motivates a wide audience.

That being said, I’m all for individual style shining through, and I’m finally finally starting to feel like I have a voice with my artwork. When I look through my sketchbooks they are definitely becoming more coherent and inherently “me”, whatever the subject matter, and that’s something I’ve been striving to achieve. I want to be able to draw anything, but to make sure it looks I like I drew it.

I’m aware this sounds a little critical, or that I didn’t enjoy the session, both of which would be wrong. I think it’s more that I realised how much I enjoy my own style, and rather than getting more tuition on how to be “better” at drawing, I just need to do more of my own work.

Here are my hippos drawings. They are very strange beasts!