Swallowtails are among the most beautiful and diverse butterflies I know. The majority of the species live in the tropics, but you can find members of this family all over the world. Tropical swallowtails can be quite colorful and large, but the species that we have in Europe and North America also are beautiful eye-catchers. They are mostly light yellow, with dark stripes and patterns (a few look like zebra stripes), and some of them have a hind wing that has a forked appearance – hence the name swallowtail.
For the new video tutorials of my butterfly sketching class I decided to draw a European member of the swallowtail family: a scarce swallowtail – who has in fact almost disappeared in Germany. I saw one last year by chance.
Here’s an outtake of the longer swallowtail sketching video I did with watercolor and colored pencil. I hope you enjoy it!
Sketching a swallowtail butterfly in watercolor and colored pencil
For the class, I also sketched a swallowtail in ink (lots of fun!) and painted a colorful swallowtail caterpillar.
For those of you interested, a longer version of this tutorial is available in my (updated!) class “How to paint butterflies”. The class covers the basics of butterfly anatomy, I show sketching techniques and tips, and give several demonstrations in watercolor and colored pencil from start to finish, including several different butterflies, caterpillars and moths. The whole course has over 2 hours of video.
