Bird capture

“Drawing birds can be tricky because they don’t generally sit still long enough for an artist to end up with usable results. Taking photos helps and I usually do most of my sketching from them. “The first step is to draw a light outline of the entire composition with a graphite pencil. Once I’m happy with the composition I start shading with a black colour pencil. “Coloured pencil can’t be erased so I have to be careful not to set anything in stone while I’m still developing my composition. As the shading progresses, I go darker and darker until I reach the darkest areas, which are as close to black as the medium allows. “If I’m going to add colour, I start with lighter tones to soften the shadow site of my subject and enhance the 3D effect. Then I continue with the lightest colour and work into the darker tones. Pencils are like watercolours: they’re transparent and will layer on top of each other to achieve the right tone. “Depending on the paper/medium type, coloured pencils tend to saturate the paper quickly which means that after a few layers, they start to smudge and wear down the paper. That’s not the effect I’m after so my objective is to use as few colours as necessary to create as many tones as needed.” nielsmw.com