Natural History Illustration

Here are some of my colour illustrations for my information book on fish that I am finishing off at the moment.  I used watercolour pencils on stretched paper, which I only learned about last year. I can't believe I spent so many years of my life working with watercolours and didn't know about stretching paper! It has seriously saved me so much hassle, as my paper doesn't do that horrible wavy thing when it gets too wet.

 Here is my current painting for my next dummy book, this one is on birds. It's supposed to be a pheasant eventually, although it has a long way to go. I do a watercolour wash to begin with to get an even colour and then add layers of detail with watercolour pencil and more watercolour layers until I'm happy with it.

Here are some of the pencils I'm using for my pheasant, so glad I have a big desk so I can lay them all out. I mix packs to get all the colours I want, for example I buy the WHSmiths pack just to get the peach and blue pencils as I can't find those shades in any other pack. The Faber-Castell ones are the absolute best, I got them from my boyfriend for Christmas, really want the 120 pack one day, it's so beautiful, but sooo expensive!