Drawing Wild
By Kevin McGillivray • October 30, 2025
Last night, over 40 artists and 7 birds gathered to do something wild: draw together!
Photo Opp has kindly shared their space with Appleton Drawing Club since our first session a year and a half ago. Brandi Grahl is a Photo Opp board member and a licensed falconer who participates in local rehabilitation efforts and cares for a red-tailed hawk, Kyle. Brandi and I hosted the first wildlife drawing session featuring Kyle and two more hawks with their falconer companions, Tim and Natalie, last winter. It was a "wildly" popular session, so we knew we needed to plan another one as soon as possible.
As we discussed ideas, I mentioned how I dreamed of hosting a session with owls, ravens, and crows. Brandi recommended that I reach out to Raptor Education Group, and the stars aligned with their awesome education crew to bring a whole menagerie of owls, corvids, and a surprise turkey vulture from their team of “Avian Ambassadors.” Samantha Brooks, director of education at REGI, and her education team were incredible guests and guides who generously traveled to bring the birds to our community and help us learn more about them.
It truly felt like a dream come true when Samantha confirmed that her team would be available to join us, and everything fell into place like it was meant to be. The Appleton Drawing Club community has grown a lot since the first wildlife event in February, so we anticipated this session would be popular. We were a bit nervous about running out of chairs and being able to provide a great drawing environment for so many people at once. We were definitely a cozy crowd, but the Photo Opp studio is well suited to handle an event like this one, so I was confident we could pull it off.
The energy in a life drawing studio is always special. Artists are setting up their materials, getting ready to focus, and you never know exactly what's going to happen. When you add seven wild birds to the mix, it's truly transformative. When the birds are brought in and placed on their perches or held by their companions, there's a palpable sense of life, curiosity, and wonder that comes with them. Artists are transfixed and can't help but just sit down and start drawing, or simply enjoy observing the birds.
A true interaction with a wild being is incredibly rare. The chance to do so for a few hours and carefully pay attention with deep curiosity is even rarer. Many of us get excited just seeing a hawk in the sky for a moment in the distance. At a wildlife drawing session you get to hang out with birds for hours, and enter that increasingly endangered boundary between what we think of as the "human" world and what might be called the "more-than-human" world. Wildlife drawing expands our sense of what's possible and what we overlook in our day-to-day routines.
I believe life drawing—drawing or painting from a live model—is a way to create a world more curious and kind. Taking time to sensitively and carefully record your own perception of another human, bird, or any other subject is an act of curiosity and kindness. The result might be a compelling drawing or a sketchy mess, but every time we can find something new to appreciate.
Wildlife drawing in particular challenges us to be more gentle and generous with ourselves as artists and people who take time for creative practice. We don't know if the subject will settle in and be still for several hours, or be very active and observe us as much as we're observing them. We can't control how they might move or exactly what drawings we'll have the chance to make. It's a reminder that a successful drawing session doesn't depend on producing a drawing that is perfectly accurate, but rather how open we can be to curiosity and surprise. Often "art just happens" whether we intend it to or not, so we might as well dive in with our hearts and eyes wide open.
I'm inspired by the menagerie of artists that joined our session, and their willingness to take on the challenge of wildlife drawing and share what they made with each other. So often artists are stuck in their own studios working in solitude, and then when they do have art to share it can feel very vulnerable to let it out "into the wild." Going to life drawing and experiencing the shared flow and thrill of making art together reminds us that art making is as much a community practice as it is an individual one. It gives us all encouragement to share our art with the world.
For me, meeting Aldo the barred owl was a special treat. I often enjoy hearing a barred owl in my neighborhood but haven't been able to catch a glimpse of the owl directly. I noticed so many artists took the time to draw the expressive depth of Aldo's eyes. It was clear she was looking at us with as much interest and curiosity as we were looking at her, and she could probably see us in a lot more detail. REGI gave us the opportunity to get to know our feathered neighbors and realize that we are more connected and share more in common than meets the eye.
I’m grateful to the REGI team, the avian ambassadors, Photo Opp, and the dozens of artists who are part of the Appleton Drawing Club community. Whether you're a professional artist or haven't picked up a pencil to draw in years, I hope you'll join us at a life drawing session. You might be surprised to see what "art happens."
–Kevin McGillivray | Appleton Drawing Club Organizer
Special thank you to: the REGI avian ambassadors, the REGI education team, Brandi Grahl, Alex Baranowski, Mikey Koziczkowski, Cat Tervo, Julia Maack, Morgan Kirchenwitz, John Adams, and the wonderful Appleton Drawing Club community.
