Animal Farm

Memorial Day weekend, Mandy and I took a trip down to Johnson City. LBJ's ranch was here. I have a soft spot for LBJ because of one story I heard about him holding important meetings while sitting on the can. That is power.

We went to the Exotic Resort Zoo. It is a pretty cool place that you ride around in a sort of caged trailer on the back of a tractor. All sort of large mammals approach the trailer and you can feed them by hand.

Here is Mandy with "Omar" the camel. Omar was quite a friend for the whole excursion. He followed the trailer throughout the entire trip and licked Mandy a lot.

I took a lot of photos of the animals. With the intention to then come home and do some life drawing of the animals. But like keeping up with my blog, it never happened...maybe one day.

I guess it would not really be life drawings...as much as drawing from ref... So now if you ever see my portfolio and you see gestures of musk oxen, you'll second guess whether they were drawn "from life."

They had a lot of interesting exotic deer and sheep...unfortunately it has been so long now, that I do not remember any of the species. They also have a pretty nice petting zoo, with many of the animals available to see closer up."

They also have a bed and breakfast, that allows you to stay amongst the animals and have access to some of their other critters like kangaroos. It sounds like it would be a lot of fun, especially if you brought a sketchbook and were actually able to do drawings "from life."