Live workshop! Draw & Paint a majestic Atlas moth

Draw & Paint Majestic Moths

Saturday, May 6 from 9am to 4pm
5 Rivers Delta Resource Center
Spanish Fort, Alabama

$135 includes all art supplies and a professionally mounted Atlas moth to keep*

No experience necessary! Learn a simple system for drawing a realistic and detailed pencil foundation, then add layers of watercolor and graphite to create a striking portrait of one of the world’s largest and most beautiful moths. All workshop materials are included, including your art supplies, illustrated printable tutorial pages and the lovely Atlas moth specimen you use as a model.

Enrollment is limited to 15. Step-by-step instructor guidance is provided. Bring a sack lunch for our midday lunch break (there will also be coffee, pastries, fruit and water to enjoy through the day).

To sign up, email studio@valwebb.com.

*Moths are collected after a full natural life cycle, not killed for our use.

Join Draw Paint Letter, the artist/naturalist’s year

If you want to draw and paint the natural world — birds, botanicals, fish, skies, butterflies and much more — my popular email course, Draw Paint Letter™, is starting up this month. You will receive three tutorials every week: beautifully illustrated printables on Mondays and Wednesdays, a full video lesson on Fridays. Your access to the lessons is PERMANENT. You can watch the videos and download the printed tutorials forever.

No experience is necessary, and the supply list is modest. Instructor feedback and guidance is available at any time, by email. The cost is $30 per month, payable by check or PayPal.

Email me at studio@valwebb.com to sign up.

Need more information? Click here for the supply list and additional course details:

DRAW PAINT LETTER SUPPLY LIST AND POLICIES

Happy drawing, all year long!

 

 

 

 

New course starts April 18!

Eight Flowers Eight Ways
10 Lessons – work at your own pace
$65

This richly illustrated, information-packed course focuses on drawing and painting eight historic flowers (orchid, peony, saffron crocus, angel trumpet and more) using eight very different techniques. We’ll use pencil, ink and watercolor — separately and in various combinations, and in a variety of creative styles. Each lesson, posted weekly on Tuesdays, includes video and multiple printable pages. Unlimited instructor guidance and feedback are available by email. Keep video access for one full year from the start date. Registration is payable by check or PayPal. To sign up, email me directly at studio@valwebb.com.

DOWNLOAD SUPPLY LIST FOR “EIGHT FLOWERS EIGHT WAYS”

Beautiful Pest

Invasive species can be beautiful. One example: the butterfly moth (Paysandisia archon), a stowaway in shipments of palms going from its native Argentina to the European mainland. Now thousands of them are happily devouring palm trees from the inside out all along the Mediterranean. But despite their voracious appetite for trees, they are lovely to draw.

 

The camellias have arrived

It’s camellia season on the Gulf Coast and big, showy blossoms are everywhere. Unlike the azalea’s brief explosion of riotous color followed by ten months of weedy-looking shrubbery, the camellia’s glossy greenery looks robust year round. Some varieties bloom for months and can survive, essentially neglected, for centuries.

But I like them because they are such fun to draw. Simple or heavily ruffled, their flowers range from snowy white to delicate pink to intense crimson — or speckled and spattered combinations of these colors. And their crepe texture is perfect for colored pencil. Here’s a recent preliminary drawing using a dark umber Prismacolor pencil:

And here’s the same drawing, with layers of color added. I used five colors in addition to the umber “foundation drawing” :  Crimson, Cream, Chartreuse, Canary Yellow and Dark Green:

Did you know…

…”Nar” is the Old Norse word for corpse. These whales are named for their mottled resemblance to drowned sailors. A bit of cetacean trivia for your day!

More Inktober cat caricatures:

Drawing 30 cats for Inktober 2016

It’s time once again for the annual, worldwide, month-long challenge: a drawing each day  in ink. (If you’d like to take part — and I encourage you to do exactly that — here’s the Inktober website for more info.)

I’m planning to caricature a different cat each day. This one is Otis, a sweet yellow kitty I had many long years ago, when my girls were small.  Otis loved attention, and he allowed the girls to dress him in baby clothes and push him around in a stroller. He was a mellow sort of cat.

Tomorrow’s sketch will be Jakey, a handsome kitty who lives in Connecticut. See you then.

 

 

Draw Paint Letter update

This gallery contains 4 photos.

We are nearly halfway through the yearlong course! Here are some recent projects and topics. Registration is always open — …

Continue reading →

You asked and I listened…

I’m delighted to announce that all 11 of my previous online art courses are being converted to an on-demand, “start anytime” format with a full year of video access. The first three, Drawn & Decorated Watercolor Lettering, The Heirloom Garden in Colored Pencil, and Birds in Watercolor and Beyond, are available now. The rest will be added within the coming week.

The new anytime art class lineup includes:

• Drawn & Decorated Watercolor Lettering (10 lessons)
• The Heirloom Garden in Colored Pencil (10 lessons)
• Birds in Watercolor and Beyond (10 lessons)
• Birds in Colored Pencil (9 lessons)
• Drawing Horses and Ponies (10 lessons)
• Drawing Dogs and Cats (8 lessons)
• Draw Owls: Designed for the Dark (4 lesson mini-course)
• Draw and Paint Six Culinary Herbs (10 lessons)
• Botanical Sketchbook Painting (4 subject modules)
• Draw and Paint Fairies in Nature (10 lessons)
• Fairies II: Draw and Paint the Enchanted World (10 lessons)

As always, you are free to work at your own pace and instructor feedback is available as often as you like. For more information and supply lists, visit my Start Anytime Online Classes page.