Hi, welcome to my website. Here, you will find wildlife drawings I’ve made over the past few years.

A few words about myself. I’ve been a really keen birder since aged eleven. A big decision in life was whether to go to art school, or to study ecology at university and work in conservation. I decided on the second and have worked as an ecologist for the RSPB since 1996. I pretty much gave up doing artwork until recently.

I’ve always wanted to draw birds in the field, though, and was particularly inspired by a day out on the Norfolk Coast many years ago with the late, great Greg Poole https://gregpoole.co.uk/. I think Greg’s artwork is wonderful, and everything that wildlife art should be – his pictures brilliantly capture the colour, movement and beauty of nature. I think you can only do this very well by drawing from life. The trouble was that, no matter how much I tried with a pencil and paper, I was terrible at drawing birds from life!

Then, a few years ago, my mother-in-law introduced me to drawing on a tablet using a stylus. It’s a great way to quickly sketch and capture colour in the field. Also, if there’s a risk of overworking a picture (which I’m prone to doing), you can make a copy of the picture and continue drawing on this second version. If you overwork this, you can return to the first copy. I use a very simple drawing app called ‘Brushes’. My golden rule is to never work from photographs.

It’s really worth having a go at drawing from life on a tablet. It can take a bit of time to get used to, but it’s certainly greatly improved my observation skills, as well as increasing my wider appreciation of colour, line and composition. And it’s made me re-discover and appreciate many common birds, which I hadn’t looked at properly for a long time.

Many thanks to Xingbo (Nora) Dong for setting up the website.

Malcolm