They live in my sketchbook…

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art classes, drawing, fairies, illustration, Val Webb

…and they’ve been keeping me very busy over the past few weeks, as my “Draw and Paint Fairies in Nature” online course rolls along. I’ll soon be turning my attention (and my pencil) back to other subjects. I’ll re-offer “Drawn & Decorated Watercolor Lettering” beginning April 28, and “Birds in Colored Pencil” beginning May 12. Yay!

More than meets the eye

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art classes, creativity, drawing, fairies, illustration, sketchbook, Val Webb

What do you get when you combine figure drawing, plant/animal/insect sketches, basic watercolor techniques, drawing natural habitat — then season the mixture with fairy tale illustration? An interactive online course called Draw & Paint Fairies in Nature, which begins next week. There are still a few places left in this work-at-your-own-pace, personally guided drawing adventure. Here’s the sequence of our 10 lessons — the “Draw” segment of each is done in students’ sketchbooks, and the “Paint” segment is done in simple watercolor with a bit of colored pencil:

Lesson 1: Where do fairies come from? Draw: Val’s four-step sketch technique, infant proportions, simple facial features, sketch exercise. Paint: Using gouache, making skin tones, glazing and lifting color, baby fairy project.

Lesson 2: How do fairies fly? Draw: Toddler proportions, drawing different kinds of wings, sketch exercise. Paint: Very young fairy in flight.

Lesson 3: Why do fairies love flowers? Draw: Six-year-old proportions, drawing favorite flowers, sketch exercise. Paint: Garden fairy child.

Lesson 4: What do fairies wear? Draw: Older child proportions, creating clothing from nature, creating clothing for fairy royalty, drawing fabric, drawing fairy hats and caps, sketch exercise. Paint:  Your own fairy finery.

Lesson 5: Where do fairies live? Draw: Teen proportions, sketching fairy habitats, sketch exercise. Paint: A fairy at home.

Lesson 6:  Why do birds allow fairies to ride on their backs? Draw: Adult female fairy proportions, drawing birds, drawing the seated figure, sketch exercise. Paint: Fairy riding a favorite bird.

Lesson 7:  Who are the fairies’ other friends?  Draw: Adult male fairy proportions, drawing small woodland creatures, sketch exercise.  Paint: Fairy with a furry friend of your choice.

Lesson 8:  Can fairies live in the water? Draw: Water sprites and naiads, drawing fins and scales, sketch exercise. Paint: Water sprite painted over a toned color wash, a trick for creating bubbles, creating very unusual skin tones.

Lesson 9:  Are fairies always young? Draw: Older adult proportions and features, how to show age and wisdom, how to draw gray or white hair, sketch exercise. Paint: A fairy godmother.

Lesson 10:  Are all fairies good?  Draw: Expressive faces and actions – how to show a sly or mischievous nature, how to tell a story with your drawing, sketch exercise. Paint: A trickster fairy.

A little naiad

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art classes, drawing, fairies, illustration, mermaids, Val Webb, watercolor

I’ve been having fun, creating examples for different watercolor techniques as I build up material for the Draw & Paint Fairies online course. This little naiad (water sprite) is balancing on a bubble that resulted from dripping alcohol into a layer of ultramarine blue gouache. Instant gratification — and a handy way to avoid trying to paint around all those round shapes! I photographed the process, step-by-step, and will weave it into a lesson on color wash backgrounds. I “borrowed” her spiny wing structure from an Asian flying fish.

It looks as if…

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art classes, drawing, fairies, illustration, sketchbook, Val Webb

…this fairy sketch is flying away with my pencil! I’m having fun creating the illustrations for my upcoming online course, Draw & Paint Fairies in Nature. I’ll share some of my favorite drawings and watercolors here as they are completed. Stay tuned!

The fun of drawing iridescent feathers

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art classes, birds, colored pencil, drawing, how to draw, illustration, Val Webb

There’s nothing fancy about the boat-tailed grackle, a lanky relative of the blackbird and the oriole. Grackles populate the coast from Texas to Long Island, and are the goats of the bird kingdom — they will eat just about anything they find, from small crustaceans to scavenged dumpster fare.

But if you have a hankering to try drawing an iridescent surface, the boat-tailed grackle is your ideal model. A sheen of shimmering blue, purple or copper play over these birds in sunlight. Microscopic structures on their feathers break light apart, like a prism, and create a reflected rainbow.

(This fellow was drawn with Prismacolor colored pencils on medium-weight Bristol vellum. He was the demonstration drawing for my work-at-your-own pace online course, Birds in Colored Pencil. )

My new favorite bird…

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art, art classes, birds, colored pencil, drawing, illustration, Val Webb

…is the Lilac-Breasted Roller, the national bird of Kenya. This dazzling fellow is an ideal subject for colored pencils. This 4-by-4-inch Prismacolor drawing was a demo for my online Birds in Colored Pencils course. My new winter/spring online class schedule will email out late next week. Yay!

Drawing, drawing, drawing

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art, art classes, birds, cats, dogs, drawing, how to draw, illustration, Val Webb

I draw lots of printable instruction pages for my online courses, which means spending hours each day pushing that 2B pencil. So what so I do when I need a break? I draw. I can’t help it — it’s my favorite thing to do!

 

Why I love colored pencils

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Alabama, art, birds, colored pencil, drawing, fairies, illustration, Val Webb

Heron Fisherman, drawn in Prismacolor pencil

I live on a hill, and the street that runs past my front door ends abruptly at the edge of the bay, four blocks down. It’s an easy walk, early in the morning, to watch pelicans dive for their breakfast and hear gulls laughing as they sail past overhead. And in the shallows, when the water is calm, the great blue heron stands motionless. I suppose he is waiting for the gleam of careless minnows in the water at his feet, but he might as well be posing for my sketchbook. A beautiful bird, bold enough to ignore a small woman nearby with a fistful of colored pencils, he makes a great model.

I’m honored to be the featured artist in the upcoming June issue of Colored Pencil Artists magazine — an issue that will focus on birds in colored pencil. I drew this heron, and his fisherman friend, with that event in mind.

The heron is drawn in Prismacolor Premiere, the soft-core colored pencils I like to use. After making a foundation drawing in Dark Umber — including all the major shadows and textures — I used just five other colors, layered on over the Umber, to finish the bird. His beak is Yellow Ochre, shaded gently with Terra Cotta (the same combination is used for his fierce eye). I don’t like to use pre-formulated grays, which seem a little flat, but prefer to blend a warm and vital gray by mixing Light Peach and Cloud Blue.  All the gray areas on this fellow are created with those two colors. Then I used black, of course, for his dark mask and (very sparingly) to deepen the richest shadows.

The fisherman’s wings are based on the lovely (and enormous) polyphemus moth, a silkworm moth that is common where I live. The richly pigmented, slightly dusty feel of colored pencil is perfect for drawing lepidopterans, from monarch to cabbage moth.

For the aspiring artist on your holiday list…

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art, art classes, botanical art, colored pencil, creativity, drawing, fairies, how to draw, illustration, Val Webb, workshops

Last night, I finished up the drawing for my new gift certificate. Sign someone else up for the online course “Draw & Paint Six Culinary Herbs” and I’ll send them one of these. (I will add hand-lettered course info and your message – and I’ll even decorate the envelope with a little sketch!) Starting Jan. 7, the course is 10 lessons with video and personal feedback, work at your own pace. The cost is $50. No experience necessary… something fun and different for the aspiring artist in your life.

Orange you glad it’s colored pencil?

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Alabama, art, botanical art, colored pencil, drawing, how to draw, illustration, Val Webb

If you’ve been wondering whatever became of those pencil studies of citrus fruit, here’s a peek at the final result. This old-fashioned fruit crate label was commissioned by Mobile Botanical Gardens to promote a slate of upcoming events celebrating citrus. Like the labels of old, the image measures 10×11 inches. It’s all in colored pencil, using a “speed pencil” technique that I love — all the shading is done in an “underpainting” layer using just Dark Umber pencil, then the color is added at the last in a single layer. The wonderful shadows and highlights are simply the result of the umber drawing showing through the color. Below, the peeled orange is still in the umber stage but the shiny satsuma orange next to it has already received a layer of color… just a single layer of orange pencil! Thanks to the textures and shadows already shaded beneath, you get a lush and complex result. It’s a great alternative to the traditional slow layering of different colors to build depth.