HOW TO DRAW A WESTERN SWAMPHEN
Supplies
- Mechanical pencil
- Kneaded eraser
- Coloured pencils: Faber Castell Polychromos
- Watercolours: Winsor&Newton professional (The artist's choice 18 half pans), Sennelier (half pans)
- Rapidograph: Staedtler pigment liner 0.05mm
- Brushes: a bigger, round one for the first steps and a second, very thin one, for details
- Glossy paper (optional)
- Carbon paper (optional)
Paper
- For the studies: Fabriano Watercolour sketchbook 200g/m2
- For the draft: any paper you have is good
- For the final illustration: Fabriano artistico 300g/m2 extra white, cold pressed
To start, choose a species and know about its peculiarities (I chose the western swamphen, Porphyrio porphyrio).
Look for informations about its biology and its main anatomical features and collect photo references.
In your sketchbook, make the preparatory studies: using basic shapes, sketch the animal in various poses to understand the proportions and the placement of each part in relation to the others.
Pay attention to the variation in the shape and orentation of the plumage (or hair, or scales...), based on the part it covers.
Proceed with the colour study: select the hues and mix them, then write down the ones that are the closest to your subject.
Step to the draft of the definitive image. It can be a rough drawing, you don't have to be particularly clean at this stage.
Choose the pose to draw the animal in, selecting from your references only the aspects of your interest and showing the main features of the species.
Draw the animal in its peculiar ethological aspects: here the purple swamphen is depicted in the practice, quite rare in birds, of bringing food to the beak using their feet.
Draw a support surface that can be suggestive of the habitat where the animal lives in.
Start the final illustration copying the draft with a very light stroke or transferring it using glossy and carbon paper. The drawing has to be precise and so light that it will disappear once the illustration in finished.
Paint using colour washes: the final result will be given by their overlaying.
The first, very light washes define the volumes.
Proceeding, pay attention to the consistences you want to convey. Don't paint all that you see, just give the observer an indication they will generalise.
Complete the illustration with the final details, being careful to leave some light points.
Use a rapidograph to darken with precision some spots like the pupil.
In order to highlight the subject of your illustration, you can leave the support surface in black and white.
Thank you for watching!
