Butterflies and Moths workshop

On Friday and Saturday I went along to a painting/drawing Butterflies and Moths workshop run by Sarah Morrish; her blog The Natural Year is a wonderful journey through the seasons.  Her illustrations are lovely so I was looking forward to learning a lot.

I drove to "The Holt" where the workshop was being held through the gorgeous Hampshire countryside.  The sun was shining, the day was warm and there were purple fields of flax (at least I think it was flax) that seemed to glow.

I didn't take too many pictures of the building we were in, but it used to be a tractor shed.  Not that you would believe it now, with its high pitched roof and oak beams (and there is a large fire place), it is just beautiful. 

Sarah began with a demonstration of how to draw butterflies, their wing structure etc. and then we had to choose our specimens. 

I chose this:

Bedstraw Hawk Moth

It was just so pretty.  Because its a set specimen you can see the lovely colours on its hind wings, but if it was alive and sitting naturally its fore wings would be covering them. 

I got my initial drawing done and then Sarah demonstrated how to start the painting in watercolour.  I was using colour pencil but still found it interesting.  After what seemed like a few minutes, but was in fact about an hour, we stopped for lunch.  Look where we sat to have it:

Lunch in the shade of a tree

After lunch, we carried on.  We stopped again at about 3.00 for cream tea. Yum.  Then we carried on until the end of the day.

Scones with traditional jam and cream, or lemon curd and mascarpone

The following day it was an equally pretty drive out to the Holt, but the day was cooler and I could start straight away on my drawing.  Time does fly when you are concentrating; I would get up and walk around and look at other people's work from time to time.  There are some very talented people out there.  Sarah showed us a butterfly that she was working on in her sketch book, its the kind of book that makes me sigh.  Its just so full of gorgeous drawings and paintings.  She showed us how to do insect bodies and hairs; I seemed to have picked a very hairy moth and doing all those hairs in colour pencil was going to be tricky. 

Layers and layers of colour.

I used the usual layering technique for colour pencil and tiny elipses to lay the colour, but when it came to the hairs I had to leave gaps and colour in between some of them and then use another colour for the hair.  At one point I used a Caran d'Ache pale blue for some of the hairs on the wings nearest the body. 
I used Indigo, Paynes Grey and Dark Sepia for the darkest colour on the wings. At the very edge of the wings I used some cream and then a graphite line as the edges were hairy and very light.  Its a small thing to draw but it took two days and I still haven't finished it yet. 

Bedstraw Hawk moth in colour pencil and graphite

After another break for cream tea and a good look at each other's work we packed up for the day.  Everything about the course was good, the teaching was excellent and Sarah was always on hand when any of us got stuck. The setting was just beautiful and the cream teas a real treat. 

All in all a brilliant weekend. 

Appropriate mugs.