A peek inside my thought process for creating a watercolour pet portrait of Bella, a sweet elderly dog for International Pet Day.

Ever wonder what is actually like trying to draw or paint moving animals from life? Join me as I take you through my sketching trip at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, including all the highs, lows, and surprises that sketching outside brings! There are things you can do in advance to help prepare you for success, and to determine what that success even is for you. However, a lot of the skill building will come from actually putting pen to paper on the day itself, despite all the chaos nature and other people may throw at you.

Sketching moving animals from life is a unique challenge, but is there a way to help prepare yourself for it? In this post I share how I prepped for a sketching trip at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, and a simple exercise to do at home that helps bridge the gap of drawing animals from reference images and animals from life. I also talk about how I choose my art supplies for the travel kit, and how preparing my creative mindset is integral to my self-studying practice.

Exploring my new six colour limited watercolour palette with an unconventional split primary yellow. I use Azo Orange for the warm yellow and Azo Green for the cool yellow, and explain how I can mix a yellow from the two. Let’s dive into some colour mixing and a sketchbook test with a leopard portrait.

How do you handle very intensely granulating paints in watercolour? Join me as I walk through how I planned the painting of a lion portrait in watercolour and gouache to account for the heavy granulation of French Ultramarine PB29 by Schmincke.

Explaining my self studying method to prepare myself for painting animals from life this year. I share my process and thinking by talking through a recent pencil and watercolour sketch I did of the polar bear Hamish. The goal-focused method involves considering the materials, conditions, time constraints, and approaches required when painting a moving animal on location.