How to Draw a Butterfly in Soft Pastels

"Butterfly on Lilacs" by Robert A. Sloan

Butterflies are a natural subject in garden landscapes, floral still lifes and decorative painting. In this lesson you'll learn how to create a dry wash, how to sketch a butterfly and how to draw it in pastel or colored Conte.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Soft "chalk" pastels set
• Black and white Conte crayons or charcoal pencils.
• Nailfile, pocket knife, palette knife or scraper
• Good acid free drawing paper, single sheet or in a sketchbook.
• Pencil HB or softer
• Kneaded eraser
• Grid Ruler or ruler
• Photo references of butterflies and flowers.
• Optional tracing paper
• Krylon workable matte fixative or equivalent

1. Three butterfly sketches on a page marked up for drawing.

   Use your grid ruler to mark off an area for the size of your drawing, leaving at least a half inch of border to the edge of the page. This will let you mat your art if it comes out well.

   Draw preliminary sketches with strong, simple outlines, copying your photo references. Pick different poses. Practice until your outlines are accurate and recognizable.

   Pay attention to which way the wings overlap. From the side, the top wing is under the bottom wing. From above, the top wing falls over the rounder bottom wing. If it's a swallowtail, put in the tails. If it's got fancy fritillary edges, follow those lines. Start with simple butterflies before working up to the more complicated shapes.

   Keep practicing until you get an outline you really like.

2. Scanned very dark to show the faint sketch lines. Make your working sketch this soft and light. It's more visible in real life.

   Mark up another sheet of paper with your grid ruler for the final version. Enlarge your good sketch with a copier or scanner, then trace it the size you want it. Copy, transfer or sketch its outlines on the paper, without pressing hard. You can cut out the enlarged sketch and move it around on the paper to place the butterfly in your composition before sketching or tracing it in. Do the same with the flower it's on or any other elements.

   Keep these working sketches simple, only guidelines for placing shapes on the paper. Try to imagine them in color to create balance, if you cut them out in colored paper this might be easier.

   When your working sketch is final, lighten the lines with a kneaded eraser until you can barely see them. Spray with workable fixative.

3. Dry wash in progress

   Working from background to foreground, let's create a blurry background with a dry wash.

   Scrape your pastels with a palette knife or nail file to make a small pile of powder on the page in the area you want light green. Rub it in with your finger, facial tissue or chamois in short circular strokes. Don't worry if it has light and dark areas, that'll just make it look like an out of focus garden. Skip the outlines of the butterfly and the flower spikes, but don't worry if it fades over the line a bit.

4. Dry wash layers complete, colors in all areas, shading on lilac spikes.

   Finish the dry wash background, then choose a light lavender, pink or blue for the flowers. Dry wash the flower spikes. Dry wash the butterfly's wings in orange and orangy-red, making the lower wing a little lighter. Look at your references for exact coloration. Some Monarch butterflies have faded peach areas as well as bright orange. Use the colors closest to the base colors of the wing area and just fill the area with color. Don't go outside the lines on the butterfly's wings. You can blend with a cotton swab instead of your fingers to get close to the lines.

   If you don't have a color, powder two pastels together and blend to create a mixed color.

   Shade the flower area with lighter and darker versions of your lilacs color, to give them a three dimensional look. You should have what looks like a blurry version of the finished art when you're done.

   Add some distant lilac blooms by scribbling flower spike shapes over the background green, then blend thoroughly to eliminate detail. Make them smaller and bluer than the main flower spike.

   Don't put any black in, that's what your white and black charcoal pencils or Conte crayons are for: detailing. You can spray your drawing with workable fixative at this stage, especially if you are satisfied with the color arrangements and want to set it aside to finish later. Workable fixative will darken your pastel drawing slightly, this is something to expect and plan for.

5. Final stage before detailing with Conte crayons or charcoal pencils

   Now it's all right to start drawing over this loose background. Use loose, expressive strokes. Define the edges of the butterfly wings a little more clearly. Scribble short curved strokes in all directions on the lilac spikes. In the distant ones, blend them slightly after sketching them in, so they are still blurry.

   Add some bright green leaves, drawing them with bold outlines and smudging them toward the center line or away from it. Shadows are toward the lower left. Create vague leaf shapes in a medium green in the background, but use a bluer green if you have that in your set. If not, blend a little blue in with the green as you move away from the foreground spike.

   Everything in the background should be blurry. Once drawn, smudge background elements so they blur. Keep foreground details crisp. Imply rather than draw each lilac floret specifically. Combine sketching and smudging as you add more emerald green and olive green to the background, if you don't like something, blur it away and do it again.

   Highlight with the original light green on leaves. On the flower spikes, bring some of the pinkish foreground colors in to tone them up and bring a little of the background bluish colors to their shadows to unify them. Use white for some highlights on the foreground lilacs, it will blend and just lighten the color it's over. Lighten some areas on the butterfly's wings with peach over the orange and orange-red to shade them.

   This is nearly finished. The last stage will be dramatic when we use charcoal pencils or Conte crayons to add black and white details.

6. "Butterfly on Lilacs" by Robert A. Sloan

   Simplify the butterfly's vein patterns and sketch them in with black charcoal pencil or Conte crayon. Leave spaces for the white dots. Sketch the body outlines and leave spaces for white dots all over the body. Sketch legs and antennaie in, sketch the eyes which are also white with a black background. Lightly spray the drawing with workable matte fixative.

   Add white spots right over the orange or green background. Press hard with the white Conte crayon to get them to show up. Use the white Conte crayon or white charcoal pencil to add more highlight scribbles to the lilac sprays including the background.

   If you carry an unwanted black smudge into anything, carefully remove it with your kneaded eraser and repair by sketching in with the original color. Add a little more color with red-orange, orange and peach on the main butterfly's wings, without going right up to the black lines.

   Using a darker blue-violet, add deeper shadows to the foreground lilacs. Sketch the stem in with brown pastel and smudge a little, then sketch along it again with black Conte or charcoal pencil. Use the black Conte or charcoal pencil to sketch lightly along the foreground leaves, detailing them.

   Sketch another butterfly much smaller in the distance on one of the background flower spikes, dash orange into the outlines of the wings and streak over that with black to vein them. Don't make its lines as hard or dark as the lines on the foreground butterfly.

   Choose a good place to sign the drawing using the shadow color for the lilacs, and you're done! Your signature is part of the composition, so when deciding which color to sign in, think of contrast and think of creating balance with everything else in the picture. I usually leave an area down at the bottom right for it that hasn't got important details, and use my initials to complete the composition.

   Spray lightly with two or three coats of Krylon workable matte fixative to preserve it, and you're finished!

Tips & Warnings

• The point with maximum contrast of light and dark (value) is going to be the focal point. In this picture, it's the butterfly's black and white body.

• Use workable fixative to protect layers you don't want to change.

• If you like, add a few highlights after final coat of fixative to restore brightness.

• Wash hands often, and always between colors.

• Do not lick your fingers to remove dust unless your pastels set clearly says "Non-Toxic" on the box. Always use a damp washcloth for cleaning your hands. Don't touch your mouth with pastel on your fingers.

• Do not wipe away loose pastel dust of the wrong color that sits anywhere on your art. Blow it away gently so that it doesn't streak into the wrong object.

Resources

• Author's DeviantART account, for other pastel drawings and tutorials
• Dick Blick for pastels and paper