The Story Behind “Little Bird”, my Coloured Pencil Tonal Study Tutorial

My good friend Lisa Ann Watkins of Animal Art by LAW (check out her website here) recently asked me to record a tutorial for her Patreon channel. Me and Lisa go back longer than either of us care to mention, studying Fashion and Textiles together at art college many years ago. Lisa is an excellent teacher, but against my better judgement (I have little experience of either teaching or filming) I decided to give it a go!

Amazing what you can do with just one watercolour and four coloured pencils!

There was little point in doing a tutorial demonstrating techniques that Lisa’s students are already familiar with, but I didn’t want to do something that was completely out of everyone’s comfort zones, including mine! I also didn’t want people to have to buy a lot of expensive new art supplies.

I’ve been experimenting with using watercolours with wet-on-wet techniques to create interesting backgrounds on both watercolour paper and Pastelmat. I wanted something that would encourage some creativity, so I thought that would be an interesting route to explore. You can get some gorgeous effects using watercolour paper, but you really need to use masking fluid to project the area where you want to draw your subject. Using Pastelmat means you can cover the entire surface with paint as the tooth of the surface means that any coloured pencil will still show when drawn on top of the watercolour. The surface texture also makes the paint behave quite differently when painted wet-on-wet, the results are often more subtle, but that’s not always a bad thing.

I know from experience that using watercolours that are made from multiple pigments can give interesting results, as the pigments can be encouraged to separate by adding lots of water and even some salt. After some experimenting, I found that Payne’s Grey was a good choice or colour, as it gave a nice range of blue and grey tones. It’s also available in most brands, although there’s no set formula, so different brands will give different results.

Working in the tonal study, using a limited palette all the little bird to stand out from the background

To complement the watercolour background, I decided that a limited palette tonal study would work well and meet my goal of minimal supplies. I’m a big fan of tonal studies as a way of concentrating on form and values, as I described in a recent blog post which you can read here. I had a perfect reference photo of a little bird (I believe it’s a female sparrow) that had some nice shapes and good contrast that would work well using black, white and a couple of greys, which most coloured pencil artists should already have.

I’m pleased with how the finished drawing came out, but what I’m hoping for is for everyone’s finished piece to look NOTHING like mine! There is plenty of scope for creativity with this one, and I really hope those that give it a go take the opportunity to dive in and try something different. The tonal study would work on a plain background to just work on tones and form – light blue Pastelmat would be perfect for this. A PanPastel background would work well too. There are lots of alternative watercolours that would give lovely results, my personal favourite is “Moonglow” by Daniel Smith. This is a muted purple with blue and pink undertones that would look gorgeous with some purples used in place of the greys in the coloured pencil tonal study. You could even go to town and use lots of colours in the background for a rainbow effect!

Visit Animal Art by LAW on Patreon to find out more!

If you’re interested in having a go, you can find this coloured pencil tonal study tutorial as part of Lisa’s Guest Artist Programme on her Patreon Channel. Lisa also has a vast array of tutorials on her Patreon suitable for all abilities, so it’s definitely worth a look!