Tonal Pencil Elephant – Cygnets Art School Review

Hey everyone, it’s been a little while but I’m back today with an exciting review of a video tutorial from Cygnets Art School. As you know, I absolutely love art and have my work exhibiting in a local gallery, but the one thing I can never do is draw wild animals!

The tutorial I was kindly given to review was the ‘Tonal Pencil Elephant’, hosted by Cygnets Art School, and one thing I noticed from the beginning, was how accessible the tutorial was as it only required minimal materials. Of course, I had to rope my Mum in to try the tutorial with me!

The materials needed were:
  • Sheet of white paper (any size)
  • Pencil (I had a range of pencils available from HB, B – 6B).
  • Sharpener
  • Rubber

We were also given a reference image to refer to throughout the video tutorial, this was really handy to look back on. Here’s what the set up looked like and I took photographs of some of the steps too:

Our Thoughts:

Overall, Mum and I had a really enjoyable experience following the video tutorial. The instructions and guidance were clear and easy to follow, which is perfect for beginner artists. It takes you through everything, from the beginning outline to the final shading which is great when you’re trying to learn how to proportion your drawing correctly.

Elephants are hard to draw! I’ve always struggled with wild animals but this video made me feel at ease and my Mum, who doesn’t ever draw also found it easy to follow. Although, she did say that she wished she had stopped before the shading! I on the other hand, spent waaaay more time on the shading than I probably should have! Once I started I couldn’t stop!

The entire video is an hour long, which at first I was surprised at, but we followed through the entire hour and time went by very quickly. The only thing I will say, is that it was often hard to refer to the image at the same time as the video, but that could have easily been rectified by printing out the image ahead of time. In some places the instructions and actions by the tutor were quite quick, so we did have to pause the video to catch up.

What do you think of our final elephants?

Finally, I want to say thank you to Cygnets Art School for allowing me to review their course. They have recently launched a subscription package for their online tutorials, linked here, so you too can follow along their courses and learn how to draw – it doesn’t matter how good you are! This Sunday, they are also having a live draw along on their Facebook page so be sure to check it out if you’re interested, more information here.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this! Sorry I’ve been a little absent but I am excited to get back into blogging and sharing some exciting art news of my own! Thanks for reading and a special thank you to Cygnets Art School!

I was kindly given access to their video tutorial in exchange for an honest review.

1 Comment

  1. pip2771 says:

    I love art too. I’m going to try this. I’m an artist too

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