There's something beautifully…fluid about working with watercolour. It is not as hard as you might think, though it does have it’s own quirks - but so does every medium, right? This week I am using watercolour and graphite to honour the energy and gorgeous face of tiger.

Like tigers themselves, water has a nature that can't be fully controlled - it can only be partnered with, interacted with, respected for its own wild way of being. There is an opportunity for a lot of play in that. Plus, knowing tigers are one of the few cats that actually enjoy water lends even deeper meaning when moving the pigmented flow around a page in their honour.

When we combine watercolour with graphite to create wildlife portraits, we're playing with this very duality - the flow of water and the precision of pencil, the fierce and the gentle, the wild and the refined. It's a beautiful metaphor in this case for the tigers themselves, these powerful beings who can move with both incredible strength and exquisite grace.

Graphite is my first love, and I always have a graphite pencil or two and a sketchbook with me. It is such an incredibly versatile medium, there is so much you can do with just a single pencil. But it is also the most beautiful medium to combine with others - coloured pencil and watercolour, particularly.

When I use watercolour and graphite together, I always start with a light sketch. While graphite in it’s regular pencil form is not technically water soluble, if there is a lot of it on the page it will tint your watercolours with the grey, and perhaps end up in places you don’t want it. Making your sketch in a higher hardness pencil, like 2H or 4H, and using a kneadable eraser to pick up any excess and lighten your sketch before introducing watercolour ensures you have the confidence and control of a more refined medium first, and then the expressive flowing coloured element next.

The Nature of Water and Wild

Working with watercolour means learning to let go. Water will always seek its own path, find its own level, move according to its own nature. We can guide it, suggest directions, but ultimately we must surrender some control to its flow. This surrender, this partnership with the medium, often creates effects more beautiful than anything we could have planned.

Isn't this true of our relationship with the wild world as well? We can observe, appreciate, seek to understand - but never desire to fully control. There's wisdom in this letting go.

And while it may feel a bit stretchy to start off with, there will definitely come a sense of freedom as you play more and understand how your unique hand and vision can interplay with the medium. All sorts of new experiences of wonder and curiosity will unfurl.

Finding Form Through Flow

Once we have our guiding graphite sketch, we start with water's wisdom:

Letting washes flow freely to suggest form
Building layers with patience
Finding light through leaving space
Trusting the process of emergence
Refining with smaller brushes and more pigment as your heart desires

The initial layers might look nothing like a tiger. That's perfectly fine. We're building a foundation of feeling, of atmosphere, of possibility. There will always be a messy middle when making art, and I think there is probably more messy middle than anything else!

Our art needs time to develop.

*The full 90 minute tutorial is available inside Hedgerow*

The Grace of Graphite

Once our watercolour layers have dried, we begin the next dance with graphite. This is where we can:

Define key features with precision
Enhance form through careful shading
Build depth in shadow areas
Bring spark to the eyes

The graphite work isn't about controlling or covering the watercolour - it's about enhancing it, partnering with it, letting both mediums shine in their own way.

You can be as loose or refined as you would like here, though it is always worth remembering that realism comes not with colour choice, but with the interplay of light or dark - this is called value. We want to have enough darks to really make the lights shine!

Learning from Tigers

Tigers teach us about this balance of fierce and gentle. Watch them move:

Powerful muscles rippling under soft fur
Massive paws placed with delicate precision
Intense focus paired with fluid grace
Tremendous strength held in perfect control

This is what we're aiming to capture in our art - not just their physical appearance, but this essential duality of their nature.

Always, always, we are going for connection, not perfection. Use ALL your senses to try and capture feeling and life, and you will not only create beautiful art, but you will also give your wild heart so much joy!

Finding Your Flow

Creating with mixed media is really about learning to partner with our materials, just as we partner with our wild subjects through observation and appreciation. We need to:

Understand each medium's nature
Work with their strengths
Allow for unexpected beauty
Trust the process of emergence

When we approach our art this way, we're not just making marks on paper - we're engaging in a conversation with creation that honours both the fierce and gentle aspects of our subjects and ourselves.

Remember that every artist's relationship with their materials is unique. The way water moves on your paper, how your graphite marks enhance the paint, the balance you find between flow and control - these are all part of your artistic voice. Only you can make this very specific piece of art - even when you are following instruction. Your creativity, a bit of YOU, exists in all the art you make.

This practice isn't about achieving perfection. It's about finding harmony between:

Water's flow and graphite's precision
Loose washes and detailed marks
Planned elements and happy (sometimes, haha!) accidents
Control and surrender

A Meditation in Mixed Media

Working this way becomes a form of meditation. As you watch water flow, as you add careful graphite marks, as you build your tiger portrait layer by layer, you're not just creating art - you're practicing presence, patience, and partnership with your materials.

Let your tiger emerge gradually, like a being stepping from morning mist. Trust that each layer, each mark, each moment of letting go or taking control, brings you closer to capturing not just their physical form, but their essential spirit - that perfect balance of fierce and gentle that makes tigers such magnificent teachers.

Through this practice, we learn not just about art techniques, but about finding our own balance between strength and sensitivity, between control and flow, between the fierce and gentle aspects of our own creative nature.

Embody tiger energy. Embody water energy. And bring the two together to create joy and beauty through your wildly reverent artist’s hands and heart.