CHAPTER 1
PART 1
Materials and Techniques
In this section I will introduce you to the art supplies you'll need — including some of my favorites — and explain how to use them. You don't need to rush out and buy everything at once. Try a few different materials at a time to see what's most comfortable for you. I do recommend getting the best quality supplies you can afford, so that you are not struggling with inferior products in addition to your own inexperience. Feel free to play, experiment and become familiar with different mediums before you try an elaborate drawing. The more comfortable you are with your supplies, the more successful your drawings will be.
Basic Supplies
One of the great things about drawing is that you can create wonderful pieces of art with few supplies and at minimal cost. Here is a selection of my favorite drawing tools. Try a variety of materials and brands to see what works best for you.
You can do most of the demos in this book on mixed-media paper. I love the mixed-media sketchbooks made by Stillman & Birn. Bristol board is also a good choice for the projects in this book.
When you are ready to begin, make sure you are in a comfortable place where there are few distractions, and have your art supplies close at hand.
My Favorite Drawing Tools
1 Blender pen — A blender pen is great for blending wax-based colored pencils. Pictured here is one made by Finesse, but the Derwent brand is also good. These pens contain a colorless solvent.
2 Pastel pencil — Pastel pencils are great for soft effects. You can blend them with cotton swabs and tortillions. They break easily, so be careful when sharpening and try not to drop them.
3 Colored pencil — Colored pencils come in a variety of colors, types and brands. Pictured is a Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencil, which can be easily blended. I also like colored pencils by Caran d'Ache and Prismacolor. Prismacolor pencils are the softest and most opaque, so they are especially good if you are prone to sore hands, or if you draw on tinted paper.
4 Watercolor pencil — These are water-soluble and can be smoothed or blended with water. Draw or color as you would normally, then go over the pencil with a damp brush to activate the watercolor effect.
5 Liner pen — Waterproof ink fine-point pens, such as Sakura Micron, are a must-have for outlining your pencil work.
6 Drawing pencil — Keep a selection of graphite drawing pencils from 4B to 2H. The letter indicates whether the lead is soft (B) or hard (H), and the number indicates the level of softness or hardness of the lead. You will also need a pencil sharpener. I prefer handheld sharpeners such as T-Gaal or Faber-Castell. You will get the best results by rotating the sharpener rather than turning the pencil.
Watercolor Brushes
Choose small round brushes for painting with watercolor because they come to a fine point. My favorite is the Silver Brush Ultra-Mini Designer Round brush in sizes 6 and 10.
Erasers
Keep several types of erasers on hand. The kneaded eraser can be molded into a point to lift out highlights. When it's dirty, simply knead it until it's clean again. Click erasers work much like mechanical pencils. You may also want a large pink or white eraser for large areas.
Set of Pan Watercolors
I love using watercolor pan sets because they are tidy and portable. I refill the pans from tubes when the paint level gets low. My favorite is this one from Holbein. I have customized it by adding more pans to the original set. The Winsor & Newton Cotman set is a nice, compact set at a lower price. The pans are replaceable and refillable, a great choice for beginners and those on a budget. When using pan colors, I like to spritz them with a little water to moisten them before I begin painting.
Titanium White Watercolor Tube
I like to keep a tube of Titanium White watercolor on hand for adding bright, clear highlights. This can be especially effective for an animal's eyes. Make sure it is Titanium White, which is opaque, rather than Zinc White, which is more transparent.
Color Chart
A color mixing chart can be a useful reference tool for creating your palette of colors for blends of watercolor paints or watercolor pencils. You don't need to buy a lot of colors to create a large variety of hues. This is my minimum color palette of twelve watercolors. You can add or substitute your favorites, of course. For colored pencils, I like to make a basic chart just showing the colors without layering them. With colored pencils, the color indicated on the barrel of the pencil often differs from what it looks like on paper, so it is useful to have a chart for reference.
Color Temperature
An important thing to keep in mind when planning your composition is color temperature. Colors can be warm, cool or neutral.
Warm Colors
Warm tones such as red, yellow and orange convey bright emotions, passionate feelings and excitement.
Cool Colors
Cool tones such as blue, green and some purples have a gentle, calming effect.
Neutral Colors
To create neutral colors, try mixing together two complementary colors such as blue and orange or purple and yellow. Using neutrals gives your paintings balance. If you used only pure, saturated colors, your eye wouldn't know where to rest. Neutrals also provide a sense of depth.
Creating Contrast
I like to contrast color temperature to help draw attention to an animal in my paintings. For example, the warm oranges and browns of the American robin help it stand out against the cooler colors of the periwinkle flowers.
Drawing Techniques
Some techniques for drawing are consistent no matter what medium you choose. In this book we will tackle a variety of methods. Take some time to experiment with your supplies so they feel familiar to you. I keep a sketchbook and I try to draw or paint in it every day. Seeing the book fill up gives me a feeling of satisfaction. I love flipping through the pages of a finished sketchbook. Practice really does make perfect, and you will see improvement from the first page to the last.
Pencil Lines
Pencils vary in softness. You can vary the weight and darkness of your lines according to the hardness of the pencil you choose, as well as its sharpness. The top line here is drawn with a sharp 4H pencil. It is light and fine. The bottom line is drawn with a blunt 4B pencil. Colored pencils vary in softness according to brand. Some, like Prismacolor Premier, are very soft, while others, like Marco Raffine, are quite hard. The Faber-Castell pencils that I use in this book fall into the middle.
Shading
When shading, keep your strokes close together or you will get a streaky appearance. When drawing fur, I sometimes shade the animal with scribble strokes like these, which makes the animal look fluffier.
Stippling, Hatching and Crosshatching
The are many types of marks you can use for shading when drawing. Some of the most common are stippling, hatching and crosshatching.
Blending with Graphite
Many people like to use blending techniques to smooth out their drawings. This shows my shaded 4B pencil (left) blended with a tortillion (right).
Tortillions are made from tightly compressed paper formed into a pencil shape. You could also use a blender pen.
Blending with Colored Pencil
For colored pencils I like to use a blender pen. These pens are filled with a solvent that dissolves and smooths the pigment. Finesse blender pens are some of my favorites. Blender pencils are also available, but I find that they sometimes lift the pigment off the paper rather than blend it.
Value Strips
Value refers to the tones from light to dark. Using value helps create form so your drawings look dimensional. In pencil, you can vary the pressure to create light and dark. The harder you press, the darker the line will appear. In watercolor, you can create light tones by adding more water to the paint, and dark tones by using less diluted pigment.
Shaded Sphere
Shading is what turns a flat circle into a rounded sphere. This drawing of a ball shows how value adds form and makes the ball look round. Notice how the cast shadow underneath creates a nice depth. The highlight on the top indicates that the light is coming from the upper left. Use shading to add form, depth and roundness to your animals' faces and bodies.
Grid Method
The grid method is a good way to create a drawing from a reference photo. It's easy to get overwhelmed by trying to draw the whole thing at once, but breaking it up into small pieces helps make the job less intimidating. By concentrating on one square at a time, you can focus on each shape and line that makes up the picture as a whole.
1 Create your grid with a fine-point permanent marker on a sheet of acetate. You can also create it on your computer and print it out onto acetate. For an 8" × 10" (20cm × 25cm) photo, I would make the grid with 1" (25mm) squares.
2 Lay the acetate grid over the photo. Draw a matching grid on a sheet of tracing paper. Focusing on one square at a time, copy the outline of what you see in each square. Gradually you will end up with a line drawing of your photo on the tracing paper.
You can easily change the size by making your grid proportionally larger. For example, to enlarge an 8" × 10" (20cm × 25cm) photo to a 16" × 20" (41cm × 51cm) drawing, you would enlarge the grid on your tracing paper up to 2" (51mm) squares.
3 When your tracing paper drawing is complete, use transfer paper to transfer the line sketch to your final drawing surface. Do not transfer the gridlines.
Transferring a Sketch
I like to do my sketches on tracing paper first, then transfer the sketch with graphite transfer paper onto my final drawing surface. This way I can work out any problems with the drawing before I begin working on my good drawing paper.
Transfer paper comes in several colors, but I typically use the graphite version. White transfer paper is handy for transferring a drawing onto darker-colored papers. Red transfer paper is somewhat water-soluble, so it can be good if you are working in watercolors and don't want your transferred lines to show through.
Choose a brand that is wax-free. Saral is my favorite brand. Each sheet can be used many times until you no longer get good lines. You can buy it either in a roll or in a packet of individual sheets.
Using Transfer Paper
Attach your tracing paper sketch to your final drawing surface with drafting tape to keep it from shifting around. (Drafting tape is less sticky than masking tape, so it won't damage your paper.) Put a piece of transfer paper between the tracing paper and your drawing surface, making sure it is graphite side down. Use a pencil with a hard, sharp lead to transfer the sketch. Do not press too hard or the transferred lines will be too dark, or you could impress the lines into the drawing surface. Lift up a corner of the transfer paper to check your progess, but be careful not to pull up the tape and move your tracing paper out of position.
DRAWING VERSUS TRACING
You may wonder why I don't suggest just tracing the photo, since you are working with tracing paper. This is simply because you won't learn anything about the art of drawing through direct tracing. If you rely on shortcuts, you risk becoming dependent on them and losing the drawing skills you already have. Once you become more experienced, you may find that you can draw what you see directly and can skip the grid method altogether.
Basic Shapes
Another way to sketch an animal is to build up your drawing from its basic shapes. This will help you learn how to draw freehand. Start sketching loosely and lightly with a 2H pencil.
Kitten
Practice visualizing the basic shapes that make up an animal's form. Ovals and egg shapes are most common, but you will also use circles, cones, cylinders and triangles. Adding curved guidelines to the face will help you place the features.
This kitten is based on ovals and triangles. The triangles for the ears have curved lines; there are no straight lines on an animal.
Foal
Always begin by drawing lightly so you can erase your guidelines as you develop the drawing. This foal is made up primarily of cylinders. The back legs are slightly longer, so joint placement is crucial.
Drawing and Painting Fur
An important thing to remember when drawing and painting fur is that your strokes should follow the direction of hair growth. Gradually release the pressure on your pencil or brush so that the strokes lightly taper at the ends.
Pencil Fur
When drawing fur with pencil, I like to fill in the space with soft strokes. It is better to build up the fur gradually with light pencil lines, than to draw too solidly. You may want to blend your pencil strokes with either a tortillion or a blender pen.
Erasing to Create Fur
You can also use an eraser to lift out light fur lines.
Colored-Pencil Fur
For really soft fur, try coloring your base color using pastels and then blend with a cotton swab (see sidebar below). Next, add fur strokes with colored pencils. You can also color your base color with colored pencils and blend with a blender pen if you do not wish to use pastels.
Watercolor Fur
With watercolor, I like to start with the midtones, then add the darks and finally the lights. Many people like to leave the highlights in watercolor as the plain white of the paper, but I prefer to use Titanium White watercolor. Make sure each layer is dry before you paint on top of it.
COT TON SWAB TECHNIQUE
Occasionally I like to add some soft pastel pigment to my drawings using a cotton swab like a paintbrush. It creates a softer look when adding a little warmth to the inside of an ear or to a little pink belly. First, rub a cotton swab over the tip of a pastel pencil to pick up pigment. Then rub the pigment from the tip of the swab onto your drawing. This creates a softer smudge of color as compared to using pencil directly.
Keeping a Sketchbook
A sketchbook is a great place to work on your powers of observation as well as your artistic skills. I prefer mixed-media paper so I can use whatever materials I feel like on any particular day. My favorite is made by Stillman & Birn. I try to draw in mine every day. You can work either from photos, from life or your imagination! The key to learning how to draw well is to practice, practice, practice.
Use your sketchbook as a way to record and practice drawing animals and plants to use in future paintings. I like to use it as a place to work out colors and poses. I love having finished sketchbooks that I can use as nature guides or inspirational tools.
CHAPTER 2
PART 2
Adorable Animal Demonstrations
In this section I'll like to introduce you to my methods of drawing and painting my favorite sweet animals and birds. In most cases I have chosen animals that are common as pets and as visitors to our gardens. If you are just starting out, try to remember that art is a learning process. I still learn something new with every piece I create. Don't let your insecurities discourage you from drawing. The joy you feel in your art will show through, even if it isn't perfect!
Bunny Studies
Bunnies appear in a lot of my paintings. They are the perfect size to combine with flowers and birds to make a sweet composition.
Prey animals have their eyes set on the sides of their heads so they can watch for predators. Make sure you do not place the eyes too far forward.
A baby rabbit isn't just a small adult rabbit. The head is larger in proportion to the body, and the ears are smaller. Baby animals appear to have large eyes because the eyes reach full growth and development before the rest of the head.
DEMONSTRATION
Bunny in a Teacup
Add another level of cuteness to your drawings by using scale. By placing the bunny in a teacup, we can emphasize his small size and add a touch of whimsy. For this drawing I used a fun product called water-soluble graphite. You can buy it as a pencil or as a cake that you moisten with a damp brush.
MATERIALS
bristol board, tracing paper, graphite pencils, kneaded eraser, water-soluble graphite, scrap paper, small round brush, Titanium White watercolor
1 Sketch your bunny with a 2B pencil on tracing paper, then transfer it to a sheet of bristol board using tracing paper.
2 Fill in the base tones with water-soluble graphite and a damp brush. Add some outlining with a 2B pencil, but make sure the paper is completely dry first or you might tear it.
3 Fill in the fur on the bunny with 2H and 2B pencils. Keep a sheet of scrap paper under your hand to eyes with little dots of Titanium White watercolor.
Using the 2H pencil and delicate scribble strokes, shade the leaves and cup. Dot in the flower centers with Titanium White watercolor.
