New course: 5 Little Songbirds

Wood Thrush

FIVE LITTLE SONGBIRDS: A simple painting technique
6 Video tutorials with illustrated printables
6 Vintage postcards included – Enrollment limited
CHOOSE ANY SECOND COURSE FREE

LIFETIME ACCESS $65

Using a simple four-step painting technique that mimics the effect of a woodcut, paint 5 beloved songbirds on vintage postcards (provided to you). I’ll also send along a sixth postcard for practice. Either gouache or acrylic work for this course — use the one you like best. Our colorful painted flock includes:

• Wood Thrush
• Summer Tanager
• Oriole
• Blue Grosbeak
• Yellow Warbler

The complete course, including all 5 birds and an introductory practice video, will post online Saturday, Oct. 31. Your site access is permanent and will never expire, but due to a limited quantity of antique postcards enrollment is limited. International signups welcome — I will send postcards anywhere in the world.

YOU GET A SECOND COURSE FREE WITH YOUR ENROLLMENT.

Also, this is a “drawing optional” course for all levels of art experience (or no experience at all). How to sketch each songbird is included in their video tutorials, but if you prefer to focus on painting only, I will provide optional patterns that can be transferred to your postcards.

Use your 5 Little Songbirds as uplifting gifts for holiday giving, or let them roost in your own home. Either way, I hope you will join me!

5 Little Birds Supply ListDownload

In response to so many emails…

…asking for an extension of the Buy One Course, Get A Course Free offer, I am continuing it for now. Drawing is so comforting — especially nature subjects — and I know from my own experience how it can provide welcome relief from worry. Dear friends, thank you for drawing and painting with me.

CLICK TO SEE ALL 16 AVAILABLE ART COURSES

New course! Birds and Words

Ballpoint and watercolor tint, one of four unusual techniques we’ll explore in my new course.

 Special offer – choose a second course FREE. Lifetime access – your courses will never expire.

Birds and Words: A Joyful Course in Ink and Watercolor – $65

In 12 videos and 20 illustrated printable pages, this course will change the way you think about combining watercolor and ink. We’ll paint swallows in the elegantly simple style of ancient Minoan nature artists; a tree filled with colorful songbirds in the style of Colonial folk painters; design and create a kindly Mother Goose in the style of Beatrix Potter and the golden age of children’s book illustration.  Finally, using a simple plastic ballpoint pen and a thin wash of watercolor, we’ll create a delicately tinted drawing with the look of a Victorian bird engraving. (You’ll receive three antique postcards upon which to draw your choice of birds.)

Each project consists of two parts: first, we’ll draw realistic pencil studies or ink sketches of our selected birds. Then, we’ll go outside the box to re-create them using our project techniques.

Also… Nearly every civilization has a legend featuring birds as divine messengers. So that YOUR birds can bring good tidings, each project includes a hand-lettered component.  Use them separately or incorporate them into your artwork.

This course is “lifetime access” and will never expire. Enrollment is limited. As a bonus for you, choose a second course free for yourself or someone else.

The supply list is simple. In fact, if you have taken a course from me before, you probably already have everything you need:

CLICK TO OPEN SUPPLY LIST

 

Sketching Sarracenia

These oddly beautiful plants carpet the forest floor at Splinter Hill Bog, one of the nation’s largest remaining stands of old-growth longleaf pine. It’s a natural wonderland, a short drive from my house, a place rich with subjects to draw. I try to make a sketching excursion there every spring, when the sarracenia is blooming. This one is black and white charcoal on a watercolor background.

Draw Paint Letter is back!

Draw Paint Letter: the Artist-Naturalist’s Year   –   $30/month

Learn through the seasons. Keep the course forever. If you missed it in 2016, here is your chance to explore the natural year through drawing, painting, and creative hand-lettering. No experience necessary!

CLICK FOR SUPPLY LIST INFO

How does it work?

Val Webb’s beautifully illustrated tutorials, tips and techniques will post to a private class website every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Fridays, you’ll also receive a link to a full-length video lesson. All video content will remain permanently online, available for you to practice and review whenever you like.

Draw Paint Letter started on March 23, 2020 and will run for one full year. Students may join the class at any time during the year and will have lifetime access to all material from their personal start date going forward. The cost is $30/month and is billed monthly through PayPal. You do not need a PayPal account to make the payment using a credit or debit card.

(To stop receiving tutorials and video lessons, simply email Val and your enrollment will end at the close of your current 30-day period.)

What subjects will we draw and paint?

Val is best-known for drawing the garden and the natural world, and much of our focus will be in those places. Spring season tutorials include:

• A whimsical watercolor hand-lettering style inspired by the garden
• Sketching soft fur and drawing baby animals
• Using pencil over watercolor for beautiful textures on leaves and moth wings
• Reverse painting spring blossoms

…and much more.

Drawing (pencil, charcoal, pen-and-ink, colored pencil) and painting (watercolor) subjects will include seasonal changes in animals wild and domestic, birds of all kinds including shorebirds and birds of prey, butterflies and moths, marine life, frog and turtles, botanical drawing techniques, wildflowers, heirloom vegetable varieties, tropical flowers and ferns, historic and medicinal plants, herbs, trees, the cottage garden setting, natural landscapes (forest, coastal, mountain and desert), creeks and rivers, open water, skies, and much more. Our subjects will reflect the changing seasons.

Drawing techniques covered will include traditional pen-and-ink, “splash and splatter” techniques for dramatic effects, ink-and-wash and ink-and-brush, realistic pencil drawing, field drawing and sketching from life, charcoal drawing, making and using toned paper, colored pencil drawing and color blending.

…And what about painting and lettering techniques?

Many of our projects will combine drawing, painting and lettering in the tradition of classic illustration, beautiful nature journals and field sketches.

Painting lessons will explore traditional watercolor, “fast and loose” floral watercolor, pen-and-ink with watercolor, watercolor with colored pencil, drybrush, reverse painting in watercolor, ink resist painting, and more. Lettering projects will feature a wide range of hand-lettering styles in pencil, ink and watercolor, plus page design and “fancy field notes.”

Who can take this class? Do I need to be able to draw?

Draw Paint Letter is open to all. Class material is appropriate for anyone, at any level of art experience. No previous art experience is required, and Val teaches in a spirit of warmth and gentle encouragement. Our students range from “never tried to draw before in my life” to seasoned professionals polishing their skills in a specific subject area. Don’t let a lack of drawing experience keep you away!

Have a question? Email studio@valwebb.com

Carbon pencil magic

All is Illusion – 12×16 carbon pencil on hot press watercolor paper

Exquisitely gentle shading, lush velvety black tones… I have completely fallen in love with carbon pencils. I’m working hard on a new online course, so I can share some carbon pencil magic with you.  Gentle Garden will begin October 1, and will focus on using this lovely drawing medium to create botanicals (and their pollinators – bees, butterflies and hummingbirds). The details will be available soon.

Illusion

The tape is drawn… to secure a sheet of paper that is drawn… which contains a drawn butterfly who uses the illusion of owl eyes to frighten away predators. I love the medium of carbon pencil, with its slightly mysterious feel and lush, bottomless black values. I’m working on a collection of drawings now that will combine wild and tame aspects in a symbolic or narrative way.

Fidelis 

 

Les Papillons

About those robins…

This week’s Journey video lesson is a fun technique — pencil textures over a watercolor base — and our subject is the robin. Lots of folks associate this fellow with the first return of Spring, but actually the robin is quite cold-tolerant and often he opts to stay put, instead of flying south for the winter. A better harbinger of warmer days would be the noisy and numerous red-winged blackbird.

Les Papillons

My newest carbon pencil drawing. One of these butterflies seems… different… from the others! By popular request, prints will be available soon.

Something old, something new

Carbon pencil drawing in progress

I was baffled, the first time an art teacher handed me a piece of charcoal. A quiet child who compulsively inked animals on inappropriate surfaces (inside textbooks, on school desks, on walls, on the arms of giggling classmates), I had been enrolled in a Saturday class in hopes that it would channel the drawing urge.

Our subject was an uninspiring bowl of oranges — in retrospect, probably not a wise choice for a classroom full of energetic nine-year-olds. My brittle black stick of vine charcoal snapped in half and peppered the paper with a galaxy of specks and smudges. After a few minutes, I abandoned the still life assignment and sketched a herd of prehistoric horses I had seen in a book on cave paintings. Dark smudged heads and bodies fading to pale bellies, slender galloping legs. The teacher did not approve.

I did not return on the following Saturday, and for the next 51 years I had little interest in drawing with charcoal… until I met the carbon pencil a few weeks ago, and immediately fell in love.

A blend of lamp black and clay, the carbon pencil is harder than traditional charcoal. It produces a deliciously deep, flat black with none of the annoying shine that graphite can leave on the paper. The carbon pencil has a lot to teach me about drawing… and none of it involves a bowl of oranges.

Fidelis        carbon pencil, Val Webb 2019