kippurbird | arts and apes

I'm taking an animal drawing class over the summer. We have go out to the LA zoo abut once a week for class and live animal drawing. It's really kind of cool.

Today was our first class at the zoo and we were doing primates. We went over to the orangutans first (hello Librarian). It's a nice exhibit area and they have this one place where there's a glass (probably actually plexiglass, but whatever) window and a ledge where the orangutans can get right up close to you. Just the window in the way. A few of them were in a hut doing nice poses so we set up "camp" there and started drawing.

They noticed us.

They came over to us.

And they posed for us.

They knew what we were doing and they'd sit very still in the same position and watch us. For two hours we did this.

The big male seemed to be having the best time of it. He just sat there and watched us. And watched us. And watched us.

The zoo keepers were amazed at the behavior saying that the orangs don't usually hang out that long.

One of the students in my class was painting the orangs. It caught the eye of one of them and she spent a good deal of time watching him paint.Apparently that one also likes to paint when given the chance. She knew what he was doing.

They told us to show them the pictures on occasion so they could see what we were doing. They actually looked like they were studying the drawings.

It was really, really, cool.

There wasn't even a half a foot between us and them.

I'll scan in the pictures I did later. Once I get the motivation to clear all the crap that's accumulated on top of my scanner.