Chunky Monkey's drawing lessons: Gibbons

A gibbon can be difficult to draw right because of the white mask on its face and thick fur, but if you follow our instructions you should be able to create a very fine likeness.      One very special gibbon at the International Primate Protection League is called Arun Rangsi (a Thai name which means The Rising Sun of Dawn).  Arun Rangsi was once a laboratory research animal, but now lives a happy life at the IPPL sanctuary in Summerville, S.C. with his gibbon friend Shanti. On August 9, 2011 Arun Rangsi was 32 years old. Practice drawing your gibbons, and show Arun Rangsi how much we care about him.  STEP 1   Two circles, like a pair of glasses.

STEP 2  Add two more circles inside the first ones. Color the inside circles in, leaving a white spot, called a highlight. These inside circles are the eyes.

STEP 3  Draw a circle (about twice as big as the first circles you did), but don't finish it, starting at the bottom part of the "glasses" on the left side to the bottom left part of the "glasses" on the right side.

STEP 4  Add the nose (a V) and the mouth, just a curved line.  Don't put your nose too high up, but pretty close to the mouth.

STEP 5  Now we're going to draw an upside down pear-like shape around what we've done.  This is the white area on a gibbon's face, and is quite a distinct part of its appearance.  Do this in pencil in case you don't get it right the first time.

STEP 6  Let's add some color to the 'inside zone' and bring out some depth to the face. This area, where the nose, mouth and eyes are, does not have a lot of fur, so we're going to indicate that with a few short "fur" lines placed on top of the colored area -- sort of like stubble.

STEP 7  The jump between an incomplete flat gibbon face and a real-looking gibbon is not as complex as you may think. We've drawn the top of his head, which is about two times as high as the white zone is, and indicated the fur there with short black and brown lines. Some of these lines are in the white zone, to give it more depth. Like Chunky Monkey, our gibbon has no neck, so make your shoulder line start above the mouth, where the white Pear zone curves in.

HERE ARE SOME IDEAS ON WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR GIBBON FACE  

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