Completed Robin

Step by step: Getting reference

To get your drawing done, look for royalty free photos online, take a camera into a nearby garden or park, or (if like me you happen to have a friendly wildlife photographer on hand) ask permission to borrow their photos for reference.

I use mechanical Pentel P205 pencils with an H or HB 0.5mm lead.  I draw directly onto my watercolour paper, in this case hotpress Fluid 100 by Global Arts.

One of the reasons why I use Fluid 100 is because it’s quite good at allowing you to erase your pencil lines after you’ve painted on top of them.  This works especially well if you have a really light touch when drawing up your robin.

Unfortunately, I never took a photo of the pencil drawing of this animal, so we’ll have to imagine it.  Apologies!

Step by step: Chest feathers

I start with the chest feathers because this is the palest part of the bird.  We need to make sure it stays pale, but still shows texture.  I use lots of tiny brush marks to show the texture of feathers, focussing on areas of shadow.  In this case they are below the wing, and at the bottom of the robin’s body.

Winsor and Newton are my favourite watercolours, and I use pans topped up with tube colours.  I mix Yellow ochre, Vandyke brown, and a touch of Cadmium orange light together.  I make sure the colour is extremely pale by diluting it with water .  Carefully, using my trusty Series 7 sable brush (size 1), I build up the shadow below the wing.

Building shadow and texture below the wing

Next, I mix up a grey.  This is Cerulean blue with a little purple and a tiny dash of a dark brown, like Vandyke.  Again, dilute this colour to a very pale tone with clean water.  Referring to your reference at all times, build up the areas of grey on the robin’s body with lots of tiny brush marks.  Overlap the first area of colour you put down, without swallowing it up.  This blending on the page tricks the eye into making a smooth transition between different areas of colour.

Think about shadows and make sure your brush marks are a little heavier and closer together where the shadows are darker.  These are around the legs and towards the back of the wings

Adding grey to the Robin chest

Step by step: Wing detail

Robin wings are brown, but it’s not a colour that comes straight from the box.  There’s a softness to the colour.  I mixed up two browns.  The first is darker and used to put detail onto the wing feathers.  It’s Vandyke brown plus a little Yellow ochre, and a tiny bit of purple.

Outline the edge of each wing feather, then with a lighter touch, add texture to each one.  Try to leave a white margin between the individual fathers, this will be knocked back by successive layers of browns in due course, but is important in supplying detail and tonal difference.

The second brown is yellower and lighter.  Yellow ochre with a touch of Vandyke, applied quite dry to the upper feathers on the wings.  Again, pick out the edges of each feather and add texture with lots of tiny brush strokes.

Wing feathers are outlined and given texture

Step by step: Wing colour

Next, add a lot of clean water to your darker brown, to make a light shade.  Once your feathers are totally dry, pop this top wash across the entire wing (except for the areas which are lightest of all.  With watercolour painting, highlights are represented by the white paper that the drawing sits on.  Allowing this to remain unpainted gives luminosity to an illustration.  And if it looks too stark, don’t worry – you can always make it darker by adding paint.)

Wing with top-wash of pale brown paint

Seen in context, the wing is the right colour, but looks pretty flat.  Add a little more colour and tonality to help clarify the structure and the detail.

Robin wing with colour but no shadows

Step by step: Wing Shadow and texture

The photo below is a little confusing as it’s more exposed and thus paler than the one above.  However, it shows the next step.  This is to add a dash of extra vibrancy to the front area of each wing feather.  This is an orange mixed with yellow ochre, and is used quite dilute and pale.

A darker brown (Vandyke plus purple) can be carefully applied to the dry feathers to add a tiny bit of extra texture, and to show shadow and definition between individual feathers.

Detail of wing with orange and darker brown detailing

Hopefully the illustration below shows how adding these details have made the wing look crisper and more realistic.

Robin with completed wing

Step by step: Robin’s orange chest

Now that the wing is done, move onto the chest.

People always say that the European robin has a red chest.  this is blatantly untrue, the chest feathers in both sexes are a vibrant orange.  This is a tough colour to work with as it instantly draws the eye.  To make sure you look at the entire illustration, not just the chest, you can add touches of this orange across the rest of the robin.  Do this in places where it’s not obtrusive (such as the wing feathers).

This orange is a mix of Cadmium orange light, a bright yellow, and a touch of yellow ochre.  You want the paint to be quite dry, somewhat like the texture of cream.  This allows each brush mark to carry plenty of colour.

Again, using the tip of your paintbrush, build up the colour with lots of tiny little brush strokes.  This gives the impression of textured feathers.  Where the orange is darker (reflecting the underlying anatomy of the bird) put the brush marks closer together and apply a little more pressure.

Once this initial layer of orange has dried, mix up a more watery and yellower colour.  I did this by adding Cadmium yellow dark to my orange, and diluting it a little with water.

Repeat the building up of little strokes, but as the colour is lighter you can afford to be a bit less precise.  this layer adds a golden glow to the chest and fills in the worst of the white spaces on the orange bib.

Working into the robin’s orange bib

Leave a small areas of white in the centre of the chest, this makes the feathers look brighter and allows the white of the paper to glow through.

Robin with chest completed

At this point, the Robin should look pretty detailed.  Still missing legs, beak and an eye; but the colour and texture and shadows of the feathered areas have all been completed.

Robin with feathers done

Step by step: Add the beak and legs

Robin beaks are almost black, so mix a dark brown by adding some blue to a crown.  Define the edges of the beak and let this dry.  Then put a top wash of a paler brown over the beak.  This will knock back the white areas.  I added some of the chest orange to the beak too; the logic being that this colour would naturally reflect upwards onto the shiny surface of the beak.

Robin with beak added

Next up is the legs.  these are a darkish brown with plenty of pink in the mix.  I used Vandyke brown plus Alizarin crimson.  Draw along the outside edges of the legs with your brush, then paint each scale along the legs.  It’s when I’m painting the legs of birds that I remember that these creatures are, in fact, feathered dinosaurs!

Dilute the pinkish brown colour to a very pale shade, and pop this over the legs.

Robin legs completed

The last thing I paint is the eye.  It’s a risk; if you mess up the eye then the whole painting is hard to fix.  But I don’t like the creatures I paint watching me as I work on them, so I only add the eye at the very end.

Robin eyes are a reddish brown.  I used a little artistic licence by making the eye pinker than in real like.  This was to trick the eye into including the pinkish legs into the picture when you look at it.  Echoing a colour across an illustration makes it easier to see the whole picture, and not to get stuck in one corner.

Likewise, I used the same eye colour to pick out some details of the darkest areas on the orange feathers.

Do the iris first, leaving an area of white paper at the base of the circle.  Then knock this back a bit with a yellower or more dilute colour.  Once dry, add the pupil.  Try to leave an obvious white circle on the pupil.  Make the transition between pupil and highlight a little less stark by softening its edge with a pale, pale grey.

Robin with completed eye

Step by step: Final details

Normally, I add the really dark darks and shadows at the end of an illustration,  In this case I didn’t, I brought in the darks as I went along.  This meant all that needed doing once the eye was completed was the grass around the robin’s feet.

Represent grass by outlining each blade of grass with green, and (once dry) putting a diluted and slightly yellower green over the top of the area.

Completed Robin with paint-box

The last step is to use a good eraser and rub out the pencil lines.  This should lift the pencil line without compromising the watercolour paint.  Use a light touch if this feels scary, and be aware that some papers don’t allow this to happen as readily as others.

And there you have it.  For more of my step by step blogs on painting birds, please check out my posts on the Pied wagtail, Barn swallow, Goshawk, Parrot, Waxwing, Golden plover, and Puffin.

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Studying Chironomid midges

The recipient is Steve Brooks, who examines the fossilized heads of non-biting midges (Chironomids) to examine climate change through time.  For an overview of his work, do take the time to read this article, it’s fascinating.

The person commissioning the work (Kimberley Davies) not only is an expert in midges herself, but also grew up in Hay-on-Wye (where I’m based).  An extra incentive to make sure I did a good job!

To give you a taste of what I had in store, here is a photo of one of these little insects.

Chironomid midge Micropsectra radialis adult, (photo copyright NTNU Museum, Norway)

Getting good reference for a tricky job

I should point out that although I have a Zoology degree, I am by no means an expert in the world of flies (or Diptera).  This job was an incredibly steep (and thrilling) learning curve.

Kimberley was very helpful, providing me with realms of reference images and papers.  We decided the best way to construct the illustration would be to have an adult midge, a larval midge, and then some much more detailed illustrations of the head parts below.

Fortunately there are some very good scientific websites out there.  This includes one which has lots of photographs of the adult midges and specimens from similar families, BOLD systems taxonomy.  Here I found a rich seam of photos of my particular midge, Micropsectra radialis.  Most were from the NTNU Museum of Natural History and Archeology in Norway.

Photos of adult M. radialis specimens, (photos copyright NTNU Museum, Norway)

Armed with this reference, and having found a lovely page of reference of the characteristics of this family of flies, I drew up the adult midge and the larval form.

Chironomid midge diagram, From “Chironomid” article on reaearch gate by Peter Cranston.

Illustrating the midge larvae

The larvae look pretty similar to one another unless they’re dissected out under the microscope, they tend to be white or cream with dark head capsules.  We were both happy for me to go ahead and add colour to the larva.

Larva of M. radialis, pencil rough and completed watercolour.

Illustrating the midge adult

Next up was the adult midge, these are about 2mm long.  Illustrating this little insect was tricky as the photographs I was working from weren’t  great on detail.  I had to combine diagram info with photo details and try and get the colours right.  The thorax details were particularly difficult to untangle and illustrate.  Wings and legs were simple; wings from a diagram and legs from the photo reference.  One of the most marvellous features of this species is the males have wonderfully flamboyant antennae, thick and plumed.  These were an absolute treat to draw and paint.

M. radialis adult male, pencil rough and final watercolour

Researching the midge head capsule

Having completed the adult and larvae, we moved onto the details which are species specific.  These had to be assembled from lots of photos of microscopic fossilized specimens.  Here is some of the reference Kim supplied.  This is a page of photos of the microscopic mouth parts of the larval stages of various closely related midge species.  The species we were illustrating is Micropsectra radialis.  It’s mouth parts are at letter “D”.

Head capsule details of Chironomid midge larvae (reference from NHM London)

My first attempts at the head capsule details were a touch sketchy, so Kim provided a couple of annotated anatomical diagrams to work with.  This made matters far easier.

Reference of the head caspsules of M. radialis, provided by NHM London

Kim had enormous patience.  I learned terms such as mentum,  antenennal pedestals, and vemtromental plates.  These were then illustrated. We finally got an illustration of the relvant details thrashed out.  Below is a series of the roughs with the earliest being at top and the final version at the bottom.

Head capsule details of M. radialis, series of roughs

Illustrating the midge head capsule

Once these details were given the go-ahead, I had to figure out how to add colour.  I finally settled on an ochre-pink shade, echoing the colour of the specimens.  Where areas of the head capsule overlapped, the shade would be a little darker (like two sheets of coloured cellophane being darker where they overlay each other).  The one area of these that I knew was vital was the mentum or teeth.  They were sharp and dark with a pale space in the centre of the array.  This was easy to accentuate.

Coloured version of the M. radialis head capsule detail (4th instar) with mentun accentuated

Despite having had reservations, I was pleased with the end result of these details.  I was also relieved that the illustration worked out as I was working on a paper which is comparatively new to me.  This is hot press watercolour paper, Moulin du Roy, which takes detail very well but is less able to handle layers of watercolour wash. (For more on testing papers, see my blog)

So the painting was complete.  Luckily both Kim and Steve Brooks seemed pleased.

Chironmid M. radialis final illustration

I absolutely loved working on this project, I adore being pushed into very specific corners of the natural world and having to understand and interpret them, and being expected to comprehend all the minutae and species specific information being given to me.  It reminds me of being at college, and almost feeling your brain expand as new information pours in, and is yet another reason why I absolutely love my chosen career.

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At first sight a plant or animal may not seem particularly stunning, but once you get involved in its structure, and drawn into its details, it can become overwhelmingly awesome.  The times I spend completely absorbed in the tiniest of details of a plant or animal are amongst the happiest of my life.

Minutiae: Botanical Illustration

With botanical illustrations, it’s invariably tiny hairs, leaf venation, details of the calyx, or compound flower-heads that draw me in.

This elderflower, and the vein network of the bilberry leaves below (both from my botanical sketchbooks), required such concentration that it made my head ache, rather like algebra used to.  To get the picture right, you need to draw each and every tiny flower correctly, and in correct position vis a vis all the other flowers.  In the bottom right of the illustration is quite literally a simplified map of where each individual flower sat.  It was the only way to steer through a froth of white.  In the case of leaf veins, you need to get the spacing between the major veins and the angles of the lesser ones just right; when it meets where it’s meant to it feels amazing.  When it doesn’t you can find yourself lost in the blade of a leaf.

Holding a botanical specimen in the left hand (as I do) can result in quite severe cramp; you get so lost in the detail that you forget your hand has been stationary in a gripping pose for the last three hours… (In the illustration below it was the twists and turns of the calyx of the sage plant that drew me in).

Minutiae: Insect illustration

Insects are very easy to get lost in.  Wandering about in a dragonfly wing, trying to place all the veins correctly and going further and further into the detail as you approach the margins is a truly wonderful experience.  The concentration is all consuming; hours pass and phone calls go unheeded as each tiny cell is observed and recorded. (This Scarlet Dragonfly was comissioned by Jersey Post and will be part of a set of stamps issued on July 4th 2013, read more here).

I also find it very easy to get lost in areas of anatomy where the way light and dark falls are exacting, like on this Purpuricenus kaehleri beetle’s back (let’s not even talk about the thorax!).  The tiny holes or pits are dark, but the edge of each hole catches the light, and is shiny white with highlight.  This slight raised edge can cast a tiny shadow across the elytra.  Couple to this the presence of lines, or striae (often composed of tiny pits) and you have a real topographical landscape to navigate.  Each pit is probably less than half a millimetre across, but to get close to getting it painted right you have to shrink into that scale and try to observe what you see.

Minutiae of medium: Pen and ink

In terms of mediums, working in pen and ink is the true culprit for drawing me into the minuteae.  Each thin line needs to be imperceptibly blended with hundreds of tiny dots.  It’s easy to get obsessed, to go closer and closer to the page and to worry about the position of each individual spot.  It’s alarming, and often gratifying, to draw back from a pen and ink illustration and see that, on the whole, it looks pretty evenly blended and more or less ok.

Minutiae: Returning to a normal sized world

The most alarming part of these journeys into detail is the return trip.  This almost invariably is an interruption of some sort; the doorbell, a family member, an aphid crawling across the specimen.  It can really do your head in, going in a split instant from staring at the anther of a tiny flower amongst hundreds of other tiny flowers to looking at the enormous blunt face of your child leering at you and demanding juice.

Once, as I was painting a flower, a blue bottle fly landed on the specimen.  It seemed monumental and really scary; this giant in the city of tiny hairs on a leaf, and I’m ashamed to say I screamed in shock as it appeared.  In fact, most of my journeys into minutiae end this way.  A nasty shock as something on a much larger scale thrusts itself into my view and my concentration.  Followed by some inappropriate vocal outburst (and quite often a spilled cup of tea).

Still, it’s the tiny-ness of the detail that obsesses me, and the way that no matter how close you look, there is inevitably another layer of detail beyond what you can see or even conceive of.  For me, that’s a big part of the beauty of the natural world.

The post Natural History Illustration – A Passion for Minutiae appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

They say the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this is certainly true with a variety of natural history illustrations I’ve completed.  None of these animals evince a reaction of revulsion in me.  I’m interested in exploring why certain creatures do get such a response from so many.

Blue bottle fly

The most universally loathed candidate is probably the blue bottle fly.

These are common insects, and the reason for the feelings of disgust are clear and understandable.  Flies flit from food to faeces, from carrion to table; laying eggs and producing maggots as they go.  These habits spread disease, so it makes evolutionary sense for humans to be disgusted by flies and maggots.

However, as an illustrator I’d like to point out the glittery azure of the fly abdomen, its suede-like grey thorax, and mahogony eyes.  Truly, a beautiful insect.

Cockroaches

Cockroaches have similar habits and thus elicit a similar reaction of disgust.  However they are incredibly elegant, with their long antennae and golden brown colouring.

Rat

Another animal which has an equally unpopular status also shares these dirty habits; the rat.  This was the only mammal I could think of which revolted people and caused disgust.

I have no doubt its penchant for sharing our homes and the sewers is the reason.  Welcoming these animals into our homes may welcome a disease vector.  Evolutionarily it makes sense to feel repelled by them, and to avoid contact.

(Interestingly, when I submitted the rough of this illustration for the Bumper Book of Nature by Stephen Moss, I was asked to make the rat look “less sweet and more unpleasant” which I duly tried to do.)

Illness

Another cue for disgust is when animals are ill.  Many feel squeamish when confronted with a rabbit in the later stages of myxomatosis, or if they see the papillomas that can cover the faces of sea turtles.

I’m not certain why this should be, unless avoiding illness confers an advantage.  It doesn’t extend to human beings though.  One assumes avoiding an ill person would be more useful than avoiding an ill rabbit?  Perhaps we would avoid other sick humans if it weren’t for compassion, or if they weren’t relations?

Here is a painting of a dead baby rabbit I found outside a rabbit hole.  It clearly has an enormous neck tumour, and is very young indeed.

Cold and slimy animals

One more group of animals seem to cause a disgust in lots of people; cold and slimy ones.

Cold and Slimy animals: A worm and a snail

Even young children are taught to shout “gross!” at the feel of a snail or slug on their hands.  All I can think is that the sensation of cold slime is in some way remeniscent of rotting foodstuffs which are best avoided.

Ideas on reasons for this disgust response are welcome.

I  am at a loss for a reason; most animals which fall into this category are not threatening to human beings.  They lead lives which should cue no reaction at all, besides interest.  Below are two such animals, the earthworm and the garden snail.

Cold and slimy animals: Leech and Toad

Surprisingly, animals which can do serious harm to people tend not to fall into the category of being thought disgusting.

Mosquitoes, scorpions, wasps, snakes, and large predators such as lions or crocodiles may scare people; but they rarely cause revulsion.

However, a couple of animals which can hurt humans (be it in a limited capacity) also fall into the “cold and slimy” category and thus elicit a loathing from many.  The leech and the cane toad are examples.

Overcome your disgust!

All of the animals I’ve included in this blog are ones which will cause a shudder in many; yet all are, in my opinion, incredibly beautiful.  The markings, details, and shapes of these creatures are as glorious to me as the feathers of a peacock (see my blog) or the markings of a butterfly.

The innate and taught reactions to animals are something to be considered before we join in  communal disgust.  Even if there is a reason for caution, this doesn’t undermine the intrinsic beauty of each and every animal.

Many thanks to Adele Nozedar for her suggestion of this blog topic.

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