I’ll be the first to admit I’m not an artist in the painting sense of the word, my mother was a superb artist, I used to joke that I could do distant wishy-washy scenes and that was about it, but just this year I have started to dabble a bit so when I saw a workshop down at Otley Common to paint birds with Posca pens I thought I’d have a go. It was run by Kim Coley who is a wildlife artist, mainly painting birds and bugs. It was about £30 I think, for the afternoon, bargain!

I had no idea even what Posca pens were, they’re acryllic paint pens, so you can apply them like a felt tip, but you can then water them or smudge them too.

We started off choosing a photo of a bird to use as a starting point. I chose a wren as I thought he had quite a distinctive (recognisable!!) shape. We had some cheap paper to start with, learning to look at shapes within the bird and doing a quick sketch with a finepoint pen.

Once we had the idea, we were given posh paper, scary, I chose A4 size as it wasn’t quite so scary as A3! We drew our bird with the black fineliner again and then applied some thin washes of colour using a brush, using tester pots of household paint, nothing too detailed, just getting blocks of colour really.

Then the fun started with the Posca pens, adding detail and more colour. The pens took a bit of getting used to as it looks like a pen, but it doesn’t always flow like a pen, sometimes it came out quicker than I anticipated, but I found I could also smudge or spread it with my finger, or mix it with another colour nearby. Anyway I was pretty happy with my first attempt…

We had time to do a second one so I chose a nuthatch, we’ve got a pair visiting the garden regularly at the moment and they also have a distinctive shape and colouring too. It took a while to get the shape right but I’m pretty happy with the result.

I’m not sure I’ll rush out to buy Posca pens, but it was a fun afternoon and I’m pretty pleased with the results. Kim was a great tutor, good explanations, not easy when you have such a varied class of skills and experience, she was very encouraging too. My next workshop is in mid November, Chinese brush painting!