In July 2023 I visited Adelaide and spent a Friday at the zoo sketching animals. Amongst the bedlam of screaming children on school holidays I managed to get in a few drawing in I liked and thought were fun. Spending a day drawing at the zoo has been on my to do list for too long.

The easiest animals to draw were the alligators (unmoving the entire winters day), the meerkats (natural born posers) and the giraffes (easy to get a good view of). The hardest were the otters (too swift and hungry), the gorgeous giant panda Wang Wang (too popular) and tapirs (no excuse).

Zoos always leave me with mixed feelings. You get to marvel as these basically mystical creatures and then you get to read placard after placard about how endangered they all are. They do good conservation work at the Adelaide Zoo. But across the world we continue to relentlessly grind these little guys into dust to make trash to fill souvenir stores.