Garden visitor

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ Practise a variety of watercolour techniques, including lifting-off, wet in wet and wet on dry

■ How to work with white watercolour

Welcome to another of my wildlife tutorials! As you can see, we will be working on a colourful ladybird, which some scientists call lady beetles and many across the Atlantic call ladybugs. These are amazing little insects that very often put a smile on our face with their bright colours and round shape. I used to make the mistake of calling the colourful back of the ladybird ‘wings’, but in fact these are actually the wing cases. I graciously stand corrected.

There are over 100 species of ladybirds in Europe, of which 40 species are resident