Drawing animals

Having chosen to draw my friends cat which is a 14yr old half Siamese and half Devonshire Rex called Boris.  Thinking being an old cat he would be less active and easier to draw which was a big misapprehension as he was as lively as a kitten.  His fur was difficult to draw as he doesn't moult and the fur is curly and wool like except for his face and tail which is smooth and short haired.  It lies in tufted lines and is extremely textural. He is bald on his abdomen and the skin lies in folds. His ears and eyes look too big for his face and he is a very unusual cat in looks and personality.  I firstly drew him in pencil to get the feel of his shape and didn't realise how hard this was going to be as he was so interested in what I was doing he was continually moving about.

The only way I found to capture a pose was to go for a basic shape quickly as you cannot worry about accuracy and I think I managed some poses in this way.

The next time I visited Boris I wanted to catch him in other poses so I tried with conte crayon and again it was difficult to get a consistant pose.

The final picture I did of Boris is in charcoal and I think that I have captured the texture of his coat. Even when he was sleeping he was constantly tucking his head in different postitions.  I enjoyed my time with Boris but you have to be patient and be willing to spend time just sitting and then siezing the moment.  I have copied animals from pictures and photographs but you see so much more from life and maybe the picture looks less accurate but I think you are more likely to catch the essence of the animal and not just the image.

The next exercise is a fish on a plate, which was very hard for me as I do not like fish and cannot touch them.  Having bought two herrings and a trout and arranged them on a plate with a help of a fish fearing friend I began to draw and colour them using water colour pencils.  Water colour pencils are quite hard to use and do not react in the same way as water colour paint as it doesn't move around a lot when water is added and if you apply too much water the colour can wash out and runs to the edge of the water line.  This could be useful if you want that effect.  Also colours are stronger when wet some more than others and in this exercise I should have tested this out on paper before I applied the pencil particularly when doing the shadow which is far too heavy.
Another consideration is weather, I work in a shed at the bottom of the garden and it gets hot in the summer and when I started the fish on one day and stored them in the fridge overnight which was fine first thing in the morning but by midday they were putrid.

Drawing animals is rewarding and frought with challenges, I tried to draw some New Forest ponies earlier in the year and found that I was chasing them all around the field.  I only achieved two reasonably sketches but since I have never drawn a horse before I was pleased with that.