Drawing Ducks

July Sketch-along

Nikki Says

I had such a delightful time drawing ducks with Emma the other day. We've missed our usual Thursday catch-ups over the last few weeks due to our busy schedules, so it was a real treat to sit down and reconnect. We chatted about what we’ve been up to, and of course, the new art materials we've bought! We decided to use our new Koh-I-Noor graphite pencils to start our duck drawings. Sometimes, it's nice to limit our options to avoid feeling overwhelmed. I love the smoothness of these pencils and the range of line weight and tone they offer.

I'm using my Royal Talens sketchbook, and for my first two sketches, I prepped the background with my new distressed ink pads by Tim Holtz. I sketched the ducks with my pencil and then added some soft pastels—white, orange, and yellow—for a touch of colour. We ended up doing four sketches in total, though I didn't photograph one (let's just say it wasn’t my best work!). I was really pleased with how my first sketch came out, but I think my favourite is the last one.

Emma Says

Another fab hour sketching with Nikki! I do hope you will watch along and sketch with us using the reference images included below!

I opted for a watercolour pencil and a necolour crayon for the first sketch, then ink and watercolour for the second, and finally colour pencil and watercolour for the last sketch, which I think was my favourite overall.

I always love these sessions with Nikki - even though we are not sat together in person it is still lovely to make the time to draw together and have a chit chat about our week. We’d love for you to draw along too, and perhaps we should think about opening these up as live sessions if there is enough interest to join.