Animals Archives - Page 2 of 2

Swallowtail Butterfly Watercolor

Posted on June 8, 2018March 22, 2022 by Michele Clamp

I still haven’t moved over to the new palette as I’m trying to use up all the paint in the old one (amazing how long it lasts). I’m left with a lot of orange, red and pthalo blue so colorful butterflies came to mind.

It was good fun to use some bright colors for a change and he came out fairly loose. Pretty happy I think.

I did a quick sketch in the small 5×7 sketchbook :

swallowtail butterfly watercolor sketchswallowtail butterfly watercolor in progress

This actually came out cleaner which is often the way. Easier on a smaller scale though.

For completeness here is it part way through when the initial orange washes went on :

swallowtail butterfly watercolor first washes

Dolphins Sketch and Painting

Posted on March 1, 2018April 24, 2022 by Michele Clamp

A commission came in a couple of weeks ago for a painting of dolphins. Now I haven’t painted dolphins before and I knew as soon as heard the request that I wanted to have them jumping and lots of water splashing around. My next thought was – yeah and splashing water is really hard.

But I was excited to try this and spent a fair while looking at pictures of dolphins and water and made some sketches of how to group them

I knew as soon as I’d done the sketch that capturing the dolphin character wasn’t going to cause too much trouble. They’re such lovely shapes and are a pleasure to draw. The water however….

But in the end the water came out well. I wanted to contrast the loose splashiness of the sea with the smooth lines of the dolphins and I think that comes across well in the finished painting.

Very happy with this.

(Original now sold)