Every morning at 5:30am, I pull a toy from the Randomogrifier and see what kind of sketching adventure it sparks. Today’s draw was a tiger shark, though the toy looked more like a striped great white. That’s the fun of it, it doesn’t have to be scientifically accurate, it just has to get me drawing.
Sketch & Coffee, Live! is streamed daily at 5:30am, Texas Time, at the YouTubes
Tiger sharks themselves are fascinating. They’ve been around for 30 million years, sporting vivid stripes when young that fade into leopard-like spots as they grow. They’re blunt-nosed hunters found in tropical and subtropical waters all over the globe. Even though populations are spread far apart, some individuals range so widely that they still meet and interbreed, keeping the species connected.
I laughed about their reputation as the “garbage can of the sea.” In Jaws, Hooper dissects a tiger shark and pulls out a license plate, a nod to what’s often found in their bellies. The toy world even played along with The Game of Jaws, where kids used a hook to fish random junk out of a plastic shark’s mouth.
By the end, my sketch took shape with gray washes, dark stripes, and a little blue shading to make the body stand out. It might not be a perfect model, but it captures the spirit of the tiger shark, one of the ocean’s most iconic predators.
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Also, if you, or a teacher friend, would like a 20-30 minute lesson plan, feel free to download and share this one:
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