Pheasant

Coloured pencils are used to make all the fiddly details in this beautiful pheasant.

Final Piece

Start by transferring the Pheasant to your Sketchbook or paper by drawing over the whole of the Pheasant image with a firm HB (or 2B) pencil (including all details), then turning the paper over & positioning the Pheasant on your page and scribbling over the back with the same pencil firmly, making sure it doesn’t move around too much.
Now, have a good look at the reference and start to add colour. Please note: we are using Gouache as a base, it will not look great for a while, when you start adding pencil it will come alive, so don’t lose heart! Really look at all the different colours of the pheasants in the reference images and do your best to blend the paint (but don’t worry too much as we can do a lot with the coloured pencils.)
Once dry, add detail using pencils, I added more paint on top of pencil too, highlights and further feather details after I had added pencil shading (like the chevron shapes of the tail feathers). Using white gouache for highlights and white feathers looks good too.
Finally, looking at the reference, paint the foliage (this is optional, you might like the graphic element of the Pheasant on white?). You could pencil these in lightly first (but straight on with paint looks better, but it does take bravery!) Use muted colours and keep the foliage simple so as not to fight with the colours/detail of the Pheasant.