Giant Anteater Deadly Art

My name's Steve Backshall and this is Deadly Art.

I'm lucky enough to travel the world tracking deadly animals.

But in this show my team of artists take my killer moment

and turn it into art.

And we'll reveal another unique creation.

Along the way you'll get to pick up some tips, tricks

and techniques so you can make some art yourself.

This is no ordinary art show.

This is Deadly Art.

Coming up on Deadly Art, I'm in Brazil on the lookout

for a weird, giant predator.

I can't believe how close we are!

Our team work on a superb killer piece of artwork.

Let's get scrunching and sticking.

And we'll show you another Deadly Doodle.

Relative to its size, this odd-looking animal

has one of the longest tongues in the whole animal kingdom.

It also has a long nose, a bushy tail

and its own in-built deadly weapons in the form of its claws.

This is the giant anteater.

It can smell its prey from several miles away.

It's snack of choice is ants.

It eats as many as 30,000 of them a day

and it certainly knows how to hunt in style.

Over to our artists, ready and waiting in the Deadly Art studio.

Hey, I'm Mike, I'm a cartoon artist and I'm up for today's Deadly Art.

I'm Jo, I'm a painter and a general mess-maker.

Mike and Jo are representing the Deadly Art team

who are always up for a challenge.

And this is today's killer moment to inspire our artwork.

Look at those super sharp claws,

perfect for digging down into rock-hard termite mounds.

Whoa...look at that fur.

Yeah, it's really thick and bushy

and they have those lovely unique markings.

And as Steve says, anteaters are infamous for slurping up ants.

So we'll have the predator and the prey.

Love it! Let's get to work.

Time for some more deadly art.

We're doing a textured painting so we'll need lots of texture.

Turning wallpaper into art?

This will be interesting.

The anteater is drawn on to the canvas

and I'm tracing individual sections.

Now it's time for the head.

I've taken all of Jo's tracings.

I've figured out this is the leg.

I'm transferring them to all these different kinds of paper.

We'll combine all these textures,

stick them to our canvas to make our final painting.

So I'd better get on with tracing the leg.

Let's leave Mike and Jo in the opening stages

of their astounding anteater

and look back to when I was on the trail of this incredible animal.

Brazil is nearly 35 times the size of the UK,

with incredible views, so I decided to explore it from up high

with my team and tour guide Dudu.

Oh my goodness!

This is an animal only found in South America and one

I've been DYING to see

because they're incredible and unusual predators.

Oh, I can't believe how close we are. Look at that!

This is ridiculous. He is right next to us.

Right, I think we should leave him alone at the moment cos

we're probably stressing him out a bit.

I think our best way of getting close to a giant anteater

is on foot.

OK, Dudu?

That was incredible!

Absolutely unbelievable.

But that's not the last glimpse we got of a giant anteater.

More later. How are Jo and Mike getting on with their art version?

All the sections of the anteater are cut out

so I'm sticking them down to create a variety of textures.

Those wallpaper cuttings add a beautiful texture.

I've painted this background colour wash in this lovely forest green,

but check this out...

I've got a really bright orange which will be the basecoat for the anthill.

While Jo works on the background, now it's your turn to be

a budding Deadly Artist.

Here's Mike with a Deadly Doodle.

I'm going to show you how to do a Deadly Doodle of a giant anteater.

All of our doodles are based on simple shapes

and today our giant anteater is based simply on ovals.

So we're going to start with a big oval for the body

in the middle of our page.

And a little oval for the head.

And another big oval, that huge, bushy tail they have.

Another oval for the back leg,

one for the paw.

There's another leg on the other side.

I'll draw that with another oval.

Then he has his front leg which is another three ovals.

Now we're going to join all those shapes up.

With a line and that's going to bring us

to the nose which is just a cone coming off of that front oval.

That's our pencil sketch all done.

Let's go in with our black marker and add in some of the details.

Add in those ears which are just two C shapes.

Add in the little eye.

And come down to the forehead, adding in the nose

and a little snout at the end which look just like an elephant snout.

There's the jaw, come back.

Now all anteaters have these specific markings

which start from the back of their jaw up to the middle of their back

and comes back down their leg, like that.

Which means we can draw in the rest of our leg.

And anteaters also have these markings which kind of look

like a furry wrist band on all of their legs so we'll draw that in.

We'll go back over the back leg here.

Go to the paw, come back around, add that back into the body.

Fill in under his belly, and that paw which is in the background.

Add another leg just tucked in behind that.

Now I'll start with the fur on top of the body.

I'm just using a scratchy line to go back over that.

Come down to the big, bushy tail...

You can use big zigzag lines here to get all that fur in there.

Now we have to colour in our anteater correctly

so we're going to use

big black lines here on his back leg

all the way down to his tummy.

And also one just over his front leg.

All right, he's looking good!

Now we're going to add in some claws. Three on each paw.

And of course he's missing one thing which is...

his HUGE tongue.

So we'll draw a big S shape coming out.

If you want to add a tiny little ant trying to just scurry away,

three circles... make him look a little bit scared.

-How's that for a Deadly Doodle?

-Good work, Mike.

We went to Swindon on a Deadly Day Out

and here's how you got on when you visited the Deadly Art tent.

Go back over it like a little snake.

ALL SHOUT: DEADLY!

This is my doodle of an anteater.

ALL SHOUT: DEADLY!

This is my Deadly Doodle!

This is my deadly anteater.

The deadliest bit is the tongue.

He uses his super long tongue and captures termites or ants.

I particularly liked all of it.

Deadly Art is great!

Mine's deadly!

-No, it's not!

-It looks pretty deadly to me.

Well done, you're all budding artists.

Let's get back to the Deadly Art studio,

and those fabulous textures are bringing our anteater to life.

The fabric has been scrunched up and stuck on the tree and the foliage.

I'm working on the ant hill, so let's get scrunching and sticking.

All the blue colours are dry now

so I'm going back over with some white paint to dry brush

over those textures and really pick out some highlights.

It's looking like the real thing.

Back in Brazil, as far as real giant anteaters were concerned,

we were on a roll.

(Just come up to here.)

(Look how close he is.)

This has got to be one of the most remarkable,

one of the most bizarre creatures in the whole world.

This is absolutely perfect for us.

Because the wind is coming from him towards us.

He's got his snout right down an ant hole.

Looks like he's feeding.

He's actually even...

looks like he's feeding around the branches of the tree.

I just can't BELIEVE how close we're getting!

'Despite all our care,

'it was only a matter of time before the anteater caught a whiff of us.'

Look at that.

He's just stopping to check me out every five metres or so.

Nose in the air. Look, there you go.

He's got me and once he starts running it's all over.

'A fascinating animal.

'Now, out big art anteater has loads of texture

'so here's Jo to show you some texturising tips.'

I'm taking Mike's cool doodle of an anteater

and make a wax rubbing which is really going to bring it to life

and give it loads of texture.

The first thing we'll do is take these sticks,

which you can get in any craft store.

Make a little pack together like this with a bit of tape on each end.

Pack them together nice and tight

and that's going to give us our fur texture.

So just lie your drawing over the top of these sticks.

I'll start with a grey wax crayon and just start colouring it in.

Press nice and hard

and as you can see, it gives you that lovely fur texture.

Moving all the way down to the tip of his nose.

Change it again, back down his tail.

Now Jo's using a chunky brown crayon.

Go in with a different colour, it gives it this cross-hatching effect.

And the last colour I'm going to take is black

to go underneath the anteater

and really give him such shading and definition.

So that's the rubbing part done.

I'm going go get rid of my sticks and I'm going to go all over it

with loads and loads of wax, really build up lots and lots of layers.

Make sure you build up a really thick layer of wax

cos we'll do something really cool.

Almost there.

Great, now it's really covered in wax.

Now for the fun bit.

I'm going to go in with a comb.

I'm going to give him a hair do.

This is going to scrape off loads of that wax

and give another dimension to his fur.

And as you can see I shows through the colour underneath.

Now that is one furry anteater.

The last thing I'll do is go back over all his markings

with a marker pen.

Drawing back in over his legs.

So give it real definition.

Don't worry if you go out of the edges cos you're going to cut it out.

Then when you finish your anteater,

you're going to stick it on to a piece of foam board

and cut it out, just like we've done here.

Pop it into his habitat.

And we've put on a pipe cleaner for that long,

slurpy tongue about to feed on all of those ants.

Is that deadly enough for you?

The pipe cleaner adds that finishing touch. Nice one, Jo.

Back to the big art.

Our painting's nearly finished,

now it's time to add that super-slurpy textured tongue.

But we're still missing a little something extra.

-How's it going, Jo?

-This is great.

I'm making a lino cut of an ant so we can block print

over and over again on our canvas to make our ant colony.

I'd better make mine.

Block printing is such a good way to replicate something

lots of times in a piece of art.

That ant look great. In fact all the ants look great.

If only they knew a brutal predator was lurking close by.

Well, the giant anteater looks just about finished to me.

Let's see how it turned out. Oh, I love it!

It's all about that killer moment. Our anteater is scraping the rock

-and slurping up all those ants.

-But it's Deadly ART

and the texture in that collage really brings it to life.

A living giant anteater right here in the studio.

So it's nearly time for the Big Reveal.

I asked the Deadly Art team to recreate these killer shots

and turn them into art.

So let's take a look at the finished result.

This artwork really has frozen a glorious, colourful moment in time.

It look like our anteater's just about to start hoovering up

thousands and thousands of tasty ants.

And the claws look mega sharp.

I love all the different textures from the wallpapers,

it really brings it to life.

Nice work, team.

What an incredible creation.

Make sure you try the doodle and the DIY

and we'll see you next time for more Deadly Art.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd