Drawing animals in watercolors using the "wet" technique step by step with photos for children. How to draw a cat with watercolor pencils and watercolors

Drawing an animal requires observation, a relaxed hand, and the ability to convey character in one recognizable movement. Asya Lisina’s course will teach you not to give in to the grace and plasticity of a living creature and to capture the “canineness” of a dog, the “cockiness” of a rooster and the “antelopeness” of an antelope.

Cavemen were able to accurately and vividly depict animals without anatomy manuals, photographs, or access to a zoo where they could safely see tusks, horns, and hooves. You'll follow their lead and draw each animal more like a character than an anatomically accurate picture for an encyclopedia. Although you will receive basic information on anatomy: they will become the basis that allows you to experiment with the image method.

The program includes a short excursion into the history of drawing animals, as well as a block of classes devoted to fictional fauna. You will create chimeras and fantastic animals, which are almost more in demand in modern illustration than real ones.

• minutes of daily exercise

Who is the course suitable for?

The course is recommended for all lovers of animals and incredible creatures, as well as illustrators, animators and designers who are passionate about character development. Students do not need to be skilled draftsmen, but they must have a strong desire to work without fear of mistakes and failures, since most of sketches and sketches will not look very accurate at first.

What will you learn

1. During the course you will have to draw a lot of animals: from life and from memory.
2. You will learn to express the character of a creature with line and spot, notice the bright and omit the unimportant, capture the natural essence and introduce anthropomorphic features.
3. You'll focus on feeling the images rather than copying the details. This kind of drawing is especially useful for those who feel tightness in their hands, fear of paper and lack of plasticity in the lines.
4. You will invent and convincingly portray the author's fantasy fauna. These skills are used by artists who create concept art for films and games.

Schedule

lecture 1. Acquaintance with the history of the depiction of animals in art. Introduction to the course. (22:09)

lecture 2. A little anatomy. Let's look at how mammals, some reptiles and amphibians are structured using the example of the structure of a cat or dog. We study the location of muscles, bones and learn to distort proportions depending on the structure of the animal. (18:00)

lecture 3. Sketches and how to draw them. Working with volume using spots and lines. Video footage from the zoo: commented drawing of sketches from life. (12:13)

lecture 4. Emotions, psychology and plasticity of animals, ways of conveying characters using technical means. Search for associations and recognizable features. (10:55)

lecture 5. Methods of depicting animals (conventionally and realistically, in Eastern and Western, religious and secular traditions). Areas of application of animal photography. Animal as a symbol. Interaction with the viewer: when detail is necessary, and when understatement is good. (25:47)

lecture 6. Anthropomorphic animals and how to draw them. (13:31)

lecture 7. About chimeras and monsters. Introduction to history and fun practice. (19:20)

lecture 8. Textures and forms. Conditional and realistic ways to depict scales, feathers and other types of “coverings”. (12:33)

lecture 9. Creation of a large report work with an animal, anthropomorphic creature or chimera: from sketches and sketches to the finished sheet. Sources of inspiration and useful literature for self-development. (13:18)

Required materials and tools

Watercolor (2), small kolin or synthetic round brushes (5), round pointed brush with water reservoir (6), watercolor paper (3), tablet or folder with clothespin (1) for sketches from life, napkin or scrap to collect excess water from the brush (4), a water bottle (7). If desired, any liquid materials: ink, sauce, gouache, whitewash. Soft materials to choose from: pastel, charcoal, sanguine, pencils, oil pastels.

What's the result?

The course gives you the opportunity to feel like an attentive observer parallel life and its brave creator. You will try on the role of an animal artist and creator of fantastic fauna, in demand in illustration and design. You will learn to draw familiar animals and understand how to draw unfamiliar ones. In addition, we guarantee that during this month of thoughtful daily drawing and observation of nature, you will train your hand and eye, overall significantly improving your drawing.

Who will teach

Asya Lisina, illustrator, graduated from MAHL RAKH and VGIK. She collaborates with the Artemy Lebedev Studio, magazines and TV; her most beloved and grateful direction is animal art.

Examples of teacher's work

Student works

Alumni's opinions

Olga Doroshenko

I really enjoyed the course, thank you for such a strong teacher! Asya is smart, she commented on the work very competently, explaining the pros and cons - it was very useful. I started drawing more, I saw my blind spots - what to do, what to pay attention to.

In this lesson we will tell you how to draw a cat's face watercolor pencils step by step, and we will make the background with watercolors.

Drawing technique - mixed: watercolor pencils, watercolors, thin felt-tip pens for hairs.

1. I make a sketch on watercolor paper.

2. Now you need to carefully wet the part of the paper that will be the background with water.

3. Remove excess water with a wrung out brush.

4. I put a little paint diluted with water on the brush and carefully distribute it over the damp paper.

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5. Using a brush, you can add watercolors in those places where we want the background to be darker.

6. The background is ready for roughing.

7. Now I put away the watercolors and take watercolor pencils. In principle, I could have taken regular ones, but at that time I only had watercolor ones from the soft ones. I start working on the eyes and nose, always with the lightest color. We will always have time to darken it.

9. To make a cat come to life, I always try to work on the eyes almost immediately.

10. We begin to work on the fur, using thin strokes to follow the growth of the fur.

11. I try to make the stripes according to the shape of the body so that they emphasize the volume.

I draw the fur with thin felt-tip pens.

12. I made the mustache with thin felt-tip pens, leaving no white areas in advance.

13. Under the chin I darkened it a little with a gray pencil to create a shadow.

14. Then I regretted that I had not left my mustache white and decided to try to scratch it out.

I don’t know how well it turned out... But I think I’ve heard about such a technique.

The depiction of insects and other animals from museum exhibits is similar to sketches of botanical subjects. The main task is to convey color and shape as accurately as possible while introducing decorative elements into the plot.

The endlessly varied colors and shapes of the wings of butterflies and moths and other flying insects are interesting to look at and draw. They shimmer with colors created by the optical fusion of tiny dots of bright pigment (which can also be seen on silk), and this effect is not easy to capture in watercolor. You can either over-intensify the brightness of such areas, or apply several patchwork layers of different colors.

NATURE DRAWINGS
You're unlikely to see a beetle and a moth side by side in a museum display, but I found it interesting to juxtapose the small size and earthy colors of the moth with the hard, shiny carapace, long thin legs and antennae of the beetle.

Materials:

• Stretched rough watercolor paper 300 g/m2
• Watercolors: lemon yellow, bluish green, turquoise, cadmium yellow, phthalocyanine green, lamp black, indigo, ultramarine blue
• Brushes: medium round

1
On rough watercolor paper, sketch the butterfly, noting the location of the bright green spots on the wings.

2
Prepare a bright poisonous green color from lemon yellow paint with a small addition of bluish green. Cover the entire butterfly with the resulting mixture, adding a little more bluish-green and applying wet on wet, moving towards the body. Using the same technique, apply turquoise to the lower part of the wing next to the body. Using turquoise and green phthalocyanine pigment, prepare a bright dark green color and apply it to the insect's body. Let dry.

3
Use lamp black, indigo and ultramarine to create a deep, velvety navy blue. Apply this mixture to the wings in stripes with bright green color showing through between them. If the blue seems too intense, apply in places with a brush. clean water and remove some of the paint. To slightly disrupt the order of the lines, apply a few dark spots on the green.

4
From lemon yellow and bluish green, prepare a darker green color. Using a thin round brush, draw very narrow horizontal vein lines over the dark stripes on the wings.

5
Using the same dark mixture as in step 3, paint the body of the butterfly, leaving certain areas of the original green color untouched. Mix natural sienna with a very small amount of lamp black and paint the hairs next to the body and antennae. Compare the pops of color on the left wing with the original colors on the right. This is proof that the intensity of colors when framed by very dark tones increases.

Tabby cat

The main problem that arises for anyone who wants to draw or depict an animal in paint is related to the inability to make the subject of the image freeze in a motionless position so that it can be properly studied. Memory resources in this regard are quite limited.

Obviously, a sleeping animal is an excellent subject for depiction, and domestic cats (they say wild cats too) spend a significant part of their lives in a state of light sleep. The only thing is, how long will you - and your viewers - be interested in compositions with a sleeping beast? In addition, the liveliness of many animals is a feature of their character, and even when they are not moving, their alertness and readiness for action can be very curious.

Drawing from a photograph is one of the options for solving the problem. Many animal painters resort to this method: when it comes to displaying harmonious, detailed and active poses, there is practically no alternative.

Yet much can be learned from quick sketches, performed in the process of observing animals in motion or in brief moments of immobility. Capturing movement with one stroke of a pencil will better convey the feeling of the animal's natural poses than any number of lifeless photographs. When working with photographs, use the selection method important information and filtering out unnecessary details.

From a distance, patches of color on an animal's fur can be transmitted to general outline, as is done when depicting foliage on trees. However, if the spots are viewed up close, as in the above portrait of a tabby cat, there is nothing left to do but go into detail.

FUR LIKE TONE
The infinite number of individual hairs that make up the coat of a furred animal should generally be considered as a combination of volumes of smooth shape. Perhaps only along the edges, as well as in places where the hairs are longer and thinner, such as on the eyebrows and mustache, there may be a need to draw them.

Materials:

• Pencil 2B
• Rough watercolor paper 300 g/m2 with acrylic primer
• Watercolors: natural sienna, lemon yellow, burnt sienna, lamp black, natural umber, ultramarine blue, magenta
• Brushes: medium and fine round

1
Using a 2B pencil, make a neat drawing of the animal. This need is associated with such close-up making a portrait.

2
Apply natural sienna as a base everywhere except areas of white fur. Use a medium round brush. The paint will also need to be applied around the mustache. Apply lemon yellow to your eyes.

3
Use a mixture of burnt sienna and lamp black to mark the top of the ears. Add more black paint and use a thin round brush to outline the eyes, filling in the pupils.

4
Now is the time to determine which areas of dark color should be depicted in detail, and which in general terms. Using a mixture of lamp black and burnt sienna, apply a contour to individual light hairs.

5
Continue working on the fur using the same colors. Where the dark markings are not as contrasting, such as on the top of the head, make them wider and more diffuse.

6
Continue applying liquid black paint with a small amount of natural umber around the lightest hairs, highlighting the lighter areas of fur above the eyes, starting with the nose and working up to the forehead.

7
The short and silky fur on the nose can be conveyed with pale gray paint, gradually moving downwards to natural sienna. Begin to carefully apply the paint around the mustache, keeping it white.

8
Apply a mix of natural umber and ultramarine (my favorite mix for shadow) around the long mustache on the right so it looks white against the dark background. At this point I also added some color spots on the left side, setting the stage for a less thorough elaboration of this part of the cat's body.

9
A bit of pale pink (heavily diluted magenta) on the tip of the nose, dark spots at the base of the mustache, additional detailing on the right side of the muzzle and attention to its overall shape - all this helped to give expression and completeness to its lower part.

10
Continue working on the dark markings on the coat, allowing some of the tones to partially blend wet into wet.

11
To highlight the spruce side of the mustache, you need to outline it. This will be somewhat more difficult to do than on the right, given that the background here is not one color. Applying transparent layers of highly diluted lamp black to these areas will help to unify and emphasize the shape.

12
Finally, use a gray-blue color and burnt sienna to depict the hairs inside the ears. Such scrupulous detailed work will require extreme control over one’s own actions. To add life to the painting in other areas, use a wide brush and work in broad strokes.

Funny fluffies are already on Horizontum! This is an animal art course in which she paints animals in watercolors. Based on two master classes, Ekaterina tells how to make an image in a rapid manner without preparatory drawing, a la prima, and a step-by-step detailed classical analysis: from constructing a drawing to developing an image in color.

The starting point for creating an image will be... a photograph.

Who said you can't work from a photograph? An artist is the creator of his own reality on a piece of paper, and here he is allowed everything. Ekaterina draws animals both from her life sketches and from photographs. How to do this competently, so as to show the character of the animal, give it realism and expressiveness? What to draw: what do we see in the photo or what do we know? In her video course, Ekaterina gives answers to these questions.

A creative approach to painting from a photo is that the artist constantly analyzes what he sees and adds to this analysis what he knows about the object of the image. This creates not a copied picture, but a completely independent image, for which photography is only the starting point for the idea.

This course formally consists of two master classes in which the creation of an image is carried out using specific photographs - a hare and a bear. But for other animals with thick fur: foxes, wolves, deer, squirrels, raccoons, cats and dogs - the work methodology will be the same. After studying this material, you will be able to paint your favorite animals in watercolors, both from photographs and from your own drawings from life.

Who is this training course for?
For all lovers of watercolors, for those who have begun the practical development of illustration, for those who love animals and want to learn how to draw them, who are looking for opportunities to improve in the genre of animal painting and in general - fine arts. And there’s no need to talk about the fact that this is a pleasant and useful leisure time!
The level of your skills and knowledge does not matter, the lesson is suitable for children from 12 years old and even younger, the main thing is to confidently hold the brush!

From the first master class you will learn how to quickly create an image, working on wet paper and without any preliminary drawing. Everything you need to “grab” character traits object, and, of course, details about preparing paper, mixing colors, adding volume and the rest of the “classics” of teaching painting intricacies. You will see how a funny scrawl on paper turns into a “real” hare. We work by eye, without drawing and fears that it won’t work out. Everything will work out! Let's not forget about the "live" shiny eye, heels and tail. Unhurried work, in some places sweeping and careless, in others with jewelry precision, will allow you to feel nature watercolor paint and master some wet working techniques. A simple and accessible lesson to draw your first (and every next) hare.

The second master class is dedicated to creating a bear. IN in this case the bear is the model on the basis of which Ekaterina talks about the methodology of doing work, from creating a competent pencil drawing to developing an image in color with watercolors. After studying this material, you will be able to create images of other animals using this principle.

The first part, “Working with a pencil,” focuses on the layout of the drawing on the sheet and the construction of the animal’s body.

In the second part, “Working in Watercolors,” we talk about paints and their selection, how to depict light and dark places. About common errors and ways to eliminate them. What to do if the paper is wavy? What to do if the paint flows “in the wrong direction”? First aid in situations when watercolor “does not listen to you.”

Animals usually wear thick fur coats. The artist paid special attention to the methods of painting wool: wet and dry, how to show the mass of six and individual hairs, what tools to use. For example, in a separate lesson you will see techniques for creating a dark fleecy surface with a calligraphy brush.

This work is multi-layered; we paint the same part of the image one, two or more times. In conclusion, we place the animal in a conditional environment. To draw the entire environment or not to draw? Ekaterina gives advice on this topic as well.

We are waiting for you on the course!

Materials and tools

The entire course lasts more than an hour. The process of mastering the material can be divided into several parts. If the hare is drawn in one go, using the a la prima technique (at one time), until the paper is dry, then the second master class is designed for long-term step-by-step work.

Materials and tools for this course:

• watercolor paper from Goznak, 270 g/sq. m., one of the most common in our country,
• a sheet of plastic or plexiglass with a smooth surface,
• paper tape for fixing the paper on the surface,
• watercolor paints from Nevskaya Palitra,
• brushes: wide brush (flat), synthetic or kolinsky No. 5, round squirrel brush No. 7-9, flat synthetic, calligraphic,
• simple pencils HB or 2B.

Catherine’s path to art began the same way as many boys and girls who are passionate about drawing: childhood with pencils and paints, then art school. In youth there is a choice, and Catherine made it in favor of a professional art education. Three years of courses at the St. Petersburg Art and Industry Academy named after. A. A. Stieglitz, another five years of study at the St. Petersburg State Academy of Service and Economics at the costume design department under the guidance of the famous fashion designer Elena Badmaeva, gave Ekaterina a solid professional base as a versatile artist.

Afterwards, Ekaterina worked as a concept artist in the gaming industry: she drew characters and interior locations (parts of the game world), for computer games. Work in this area requires the artist to be 100% professional. The range of skills of the concept artist must be great in order to create characters in the most different styles, popular in the world of the gaming industry: these are realism and fantasy, sci-fi, anime and others.

In the ALS Group holding, part of the international concern Novomatic Group, where Ekaterina worked, she led a group of rendering artists.

The number of Catherine’s skills gradually grew along with new hobbies. Her interest in manga art, Japanese comics popular all over the world, led her to win a competition at the 2006 Animazuri anime festival. This was followed by a passion for watercolors, and after some time Ekaterina emerged as an established and interesting watercolor artist.

The knowledge and skills of each of us are strung like beads on a thread, complementing and shading existing skills. Likewise, in Ekaterina’s work, her experience in drawing digital reality undoubtedly affected her watercolor works. Her watercolors vary in themes: landscapes, sketches of interiors, the world of things and colors. But it’s the characters that she’s especially good at: people and animals. Her works are light and airy, completely weightless. They are like a random result obtained in an accepted contemporary art sketch style, quick sketching, influenced by an instant impression.

Speaking in serious art-historical language, Ekaterina is currently passionate about animalistic genre in watercolors, or simply put, he draws cute furry animals with inspiration: from photos and from nature, from memory and imagination. Bears, foxes, deer, cats and squirrels, hares and wolves - the world of wild and domestic animals is presented in her work as kind and humanized. People generally tend to attribute human qualities to animals; this is especially evident in children's fairy tales. And Catherine’s cute fluffies live according to human laws and always happy life. Mother bears hug their cubs, timid hares and cunning foxes, courageous wolves and sad deer - all of them are like heroes of bright children's fantasies.

It is common knowledge that any creative person writes a biography with his work. And in the works of artists, not only the mood of the moment, hobbies, but also biographical facts usually “shine through.” It is easy to notice that in the life of Catherine main topic Now she is raising children, and kind fluffies are an organic part of her life.

The artist conducts face-to-face classes in St. Petersburg, and now they are available online on Horizontum. We are pleased to present you the master classes of Ekaterina Logvinenko and hope that they will open new wave passion for this wonderful technology among friends of Horizontum.

Works by Ekaterina Logvinenko

(even more in our

I haven’t been on the animal art blog for a long time, so for today I chose the topic “animals in watercolors.” True, some will not consider this to be animalistic, since in most works there is too much general plans, claiming to be a landscape. But still, I selected them. I liked the backgrounds and the relative minimalism in the details.

In general, the works of watercolor artist Morten E. Solberg are very wide in style and manner. Range from hyperrealism to abstraction. Oil, acrylic, watercolor. In the article I posted only watercolors, mostly with backgrounds bordering on abstraction. The latter in the animalist make Morten E. Solberg stand out well from other animalists. He is the first on a blog in this style.

• Animal artist Carl Brenders. Many of his works are pure hyperrealism in the field of depicting animals in watercolors. Ideal anatomy. Mixed media in places;
• Robert Bateman - modern classic in the field of animal science. The article is interesting because of the material in which the artist expresses his views and creative approach.

Biography of Morten E. Solberg

Morten E. Solberg was born on November 8, 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art, in the department of painting and design. After graduation, Morten Solberg entered the world of commercial art. He first worked in the art studio for American Greetings. The work suited him, he was happy. But after some time, an invitation came from the Western United States to work as an art director in another design studio and applied arts. He accepted this offer. The work proved beneficial to his creative growth, and inspired a new point of view and approach to painting. Since 1970, he began to devote all his time to painting. As a result, his art became universally recognized throughout the continent.

Morten E. Solberg himself says about his art that each painting was created in order to awaken emotional experiences in the viewer. Its goal is to create, with the help of color, composition, forms, the illusion of emotions that will transport every artist who touches the world... Drawing what you see is one thing, but feeling what you draw and conveying this feeling in a drawing is quite other.

One of the artist’s favorite subjects is Indians. He finds a special fascination in the topic of Indian culture and history. One of his great-grandmothers was Native American. The ancestors also included Norwegian whalers.

I won’t talk about awards and other things. Morten E. Solberg is a highly recognized artist. The list of achievements will be twice as long as the article itself.

Regarding family. The artist is married and has three daughters. There are also three adult sons. Strongly. It must be assumed that there are rare, very great abilities here to combine the not often well-paid profession of an artist with feeding and raising a large family. A bow to such an unselfish achievement... By the way, two of the sons are also associated with creative professions. One is an art director at a magazine, the other is an art director and senior Graphic Designer in another magazine, in another state.