Drawing coursesWhy not take up a Wildlife Drawing Course!
Personal tuition available.
Learn how to draw those things you love to see in the natural world, enroll on one of the on-line courses and take your drawing up to a new level.
The courses cover How to Draw Birds, Mammals or Wild Flowers.
These course are designed to give you a helping hand towards your goal in mastering the art of drawing birds, mammals or wild flowers.I shall go into depth on the various aspects of how to achieve a recognizable rendition of a chosen subject. Starting with the fundamental basics of shapes and proportions and ending with how to apply the finishing details of feather and fur.There is a gallery for showing your work and a forum for chatting to other students. Sharing your endeavors is fun and very helpful in the development of your skills.
These courses are designed to make learning to draw pleasurable and entertaining and you should see by the end a marked improvement in your drawing abilities.
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Lets look at the courses and see what they have to offer and how they work.
Course are presented to you on this site and you work direct from the material provided. Each starts with an in depth look at the various aspects of drawing followed by a step by step brake down of how I produced the drawing that companies that course to help you understand the steps from start to a finished drawing. After that you are given three manageable and fun projects to complete. Each project consist of one of my photos for you to work from, once you have finished the work you then post them onto the gallery.If you wish you can pay for a personal appraisal for each completed project or two appraisals consisting of one in the early stage and one on completion. These are done via the forum where you can also ask questions about your work.
The appraisals with each course will obviously further help you on the way to mastering the art of drawing!
Each course covers..
Familiarizing your self with the subject.
How to hold a pencil or pastel.
How much to draw.
Measuring proportions.
Drawing through the subject.
Negative space.
Shading to show form and depth.
Perspective.
The Birds course then covers..
How I drew a Buzzards head, showing the different stages I went through.
Drawing projects: Ostrich head, Little Owl and Heron.
Also directions on how to render feathers.
The Mammals course covers..
How I drew a stag Fallow Deer, showing the different stages I went through.
Drawing projects: Meercat, Roan Antelope and Gorilla.
Also directions on how to render fur.
The Wild Flowers course covers..
How I drew a Bramble flower, showing the different stages I went through.
Drawing projects: Water-lilys, Wild Rose and Primroses.
These are first class courses for the beginner and improver and a great opportunity to fulfill a life time dream of learning how to draw wildlife.
If you want to take up a course with personal appraisals of your work then you need to act now as I have only so many slots available.
Don't forget. To participate in these courses you need to be able to scan or digitally photograph your work so that you can post it onto the gallery.
Gallery and Forum.Once you have purchased a course and have completed it, you have the benefit of staying on the site and continuing to put work on the gallery and participating in the forum.
There are three options on each course.
Course with no appraisals at £34.50 including VAT
Course with one appraisal for each of the three projects at £103.50 including VAT
Course with two appraisals for each of the three projects at £172.50 including VAT
Just click below on the course you want to take up.
Course One. How to draw birds
Course Two. How to draw mammals
Course Three. How to draw wild flowers
If you are not delighted with the course once you have seen it, then you can have your money back.
To give you an idea of my own work, here is an article published by the 'Wildscape'
magazine about how wildlife plays a part in my art.
My interest in wildlife art goes a long way back. I became interested in birds and nature when I was about 14 I remember while at school we were asked to talk about our hobbies. At that time I didn't have a hobby and I didn't consider drawing as such. One of the other boys stood up and gave a talk about his bird watching hobby and I was hooked. Not long after that I had my first sighting of a barn owl at dusk drifting across a valley like a large pale moth, quite ghostly. I was well and truly smitten.
After this my main subject was birds and insects, this continued until I prepared to get into art school and then I widened my subject mater.
Wildlife didn't really reappear in my work until I was established in my career as an illustrator. I always enjoyed illustrations that featured an animal or bird which I depicted in my humorous style,treating them as caricatures as I would human subjects.
Ever since art school I have been interested in surrealism and this shows in some of the images shown here. The humour has been an important aspect of my work as an illustrator since I formed my present style. I used to draw cartoons in my exercise books at school and then when I worked in various design groups and agencies as a designer and typographer I used to draw caricatures of others. So my work has been an encapsulation of my brand of humour. I love giving character to the animals depicted in my illustrations I know this is anthropomorphizing them but that's what is required for children's books and advertising where the animal is used as a metaphor and the humour is attached to entertain.
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Recently I have returned to producing purely wildlife art, this at first felt strange not putting humour into the work I felt something was missing. This soon resolved it's self and I persuade what I really wanted to put into the work which is to capture the essence of the bird or animal. The detail is what I love to include in the work there is so much beauty in detail the patterns the colour the texture. I don't like to put backgrounds in my work, it just doesn't interest me I prefare to focus only on the subject I find that a background detracts and if you are not careful will make the whole thing start to look like a copy of a photograph. Sculpture has all ways interested me and as a sculpture stands on it's own this is how I feel my work should be.
My wildlife work is produced in the same way as I produced my illustration which is with mixed media. I mainly use gouache and coloured pencil but I will include anything else that I feel will acheav the results I am looking for. The gouache I use in washes and in solid colour, having used this medium since art school I know it very well, its strengths and its weaknesses. Coloured pencil is used to provide texture and some detail.
I first draw the image on layout paper and once I am satisfied with the results I then rub pencil onto the back of the image and then trace it down onto watercolour board. The surface I like the most is NOT, this will give me a good wash as well as detail. I normally work using mid tones of colour first and then going to dark and then to light and finishing with the highlights. I like to give the image rounded three dimensional look as much as possible. Then I put in the immediate foreground again using gouache and coloured pencil I render this in a looser style to contrast with the main image.
I work from my own photos or I use a variety of references to get the image I want. I love to get out with my camera as much as possible, walking in the country side is a great pleasure to me and you never know what you will see. In this area of Kent there is a great variety of habitat, coast line in its many forms from cliffs to wide sandy areas. Also lakes and rivers and just behind where we live are the North Downs. So all this provides rich grounds for a variety of wildlife.
Leeds Castle has a large variety of water birds also aviary's with birds from various country's and a selection of birds of prey which they fly twice a day. This has provided me with some very good reference material. I painted the Gyr Falcon which was a mix of Gyr and Saker Falcon if I remember correctly and used other Gyr reference to produce the image. The Peregrin and Kite where produced from photos taken there as well.
![Pheasant [cock]](/images/wildlife/howToDrawWildlife/A4.jpg "Pheasant [cock]")
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![Pheasant [hen]](/images/wildlife/howToDrawWildlife/A5.jpg "Pheasant [hen]")
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There are a number of Nature Reserves not fare from me and again not only a joy to visit but provide inspiration.
The cock pheasant was painted from a photo I took of one standing on a wall in our garden also the same for the hen pheasant. I then put them in a different situation. The hen pheasant I wanted on a branch and I had taken a photo of a branch which I actually saw a hen pheasant perching on. At the time the bird flew off before I could catch it on film.
My badger paintings were based on photos I took of badgers at a place called 'Wild Woods' where they keep a variety of animals. We have badgers that come into our garden, they gain access by a hole under our fence, this entrance is also used by foxes and I have even seen a cock pheasant go through it, I hope he never meets a fox coming the other way! They have used this so much that there is now a track winding its way across our lawn around the flowerbeds and down to the bottom of the garden.
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My illustration work has depicted animals in various ways. Three of the images shown here were pieces produced for promotion to show possible clients my style of work.
The Shoebill image is a surrealist approach to the name, her I turned the bill literally into a shoe. At first it had a white background but a good few years later I decided to put a background in. This was when I was making changes to my style by introducing backgrounds something that I am not as I said that happy with. The other one is the 'Chicken and Fox' also a promotional piece. The 'Chicken and Fox' was seen by Puffin Books and they commissioned me to illustrate a cover for a children's book author called Dick King-Smith the book was called 'The Fox Busters' and that led to a whole string of covers for him.
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Two more shown her are from children's picture books I have illustrated. The first one is from the 'Selfish Crocodile' written by Faustin Charls and published by Bloomsbury. This is about a crocodile who takes over a river and stops all the other animals from using it I loved illustrating this book I used pen and ink and then gouache and coloured pencil.
The image of the lion and the dragonfly wings is from the 'Little Hotchpotch' written by Brian Patten and published by Bloomsbury this picture book is about a small creature trying to find what it is and approaches a series of animals that it has some similarity to. I enjoyed applying a detailed realistic style to the illustrations in this book and this example is probably the best.
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One memorable illustration was of a Koala Bear for Quantas Airlines and was used for advertising. I produced it in pastel and finished off in gouache. I used pastel to try and capture the softness of the hair and the gouache was used mainly on the face.
I initially made its eyes narrow to show that it was flying through the air with the wind in its face but the client preferred an open friendly look to the eyes.
Also required was an extra long illustration, I can't remember what for but it had to be about four or five feet long. I managed to get hold of a large role of pastel paper, cut that into a long strip, taped it to a large piece of plywood and executed it on the floor and of course it was sent to the client rolled up.
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I have illustrated all manner of animals in my humours style from parrots to gnus.
I have been a member of The Association of Illustrators since it started in the early 70's and I am a member of The Guild of Master Craftsmen. My awards have been a Design and Art Directors award for illustration and a Mecanorma award for poster illustration.
