Years ago, art was always part of my life, something I was good at, but not a real passion. I experimented with graphite, charcoal, watercolor and pastels, but the problem was not the medium, it was the subject. I tried drawing human portraits, landscapes, architecture and fantasy. I have so many unfinished pieces from those years, because even though it was fun for some time I was drawing things I had no connection with, so I got easily bored. But one day I decided to focus on something else, something that I had a true love for since I was a kid: animals.
Pura Vida, colored pencil, 6 x 9" (15 x 22 cm) I wanted to draw a red-eyed tree frog because it is one of the most recognizable symbols of Costa Rica, a country that stole my heart when I visited in 2017. The wet, shiny skin was achieved by using a slice tool, a craft knife that can be used to remove color and create tiny little highlights. This, combined with the use of dark sepia colors for the shadows, helped to give the illusion of three-dimensional depth.
Animals are so fascinating to draw because of their vast variety of textures: feathers, fur, scales. Colored pencils seemed the best medium to accurately depict their beauty. Even the whitest dog you can imagine takes more than 100 different pencils since I use a combination of brands and colors, each of them providing me with a particular type of hardness or pigment. I work in layers, starting with the softest pencils and creating a buttery base on which I slide the harder pencils to precisely draw the small details.
A sea otter mum with her pup, colored pencil, 12 x 12" (30 x 30 cm) The reference picture used for this piece was shot by Dr. Randall W. Davis, a prestigious professor of marine biology at Texas A&M University who dedicated his life to study the behavior of marine mammals, and who proudly owns a fine art print of this drawing. I used a special color palette, which looks a little colder than in real life to recreate the glacial ambient described by the photographer. The water was mostly made with wax-based pencils blended with turpentine to create a blurry, unfocused effect, which helped bring attention to the two adorable otters’ faces.
Ram, graphite and colored pencil, 6 x 9" (15 x 22 cm) This drawing was mostly done with graphite. A base layer was first created using graphite powder and soft graphite pencils. Then, textures were achieved by using harder graphite pencils in combination with a black colored pencil to emphasize the darkest shadows. A tiny, squared-tip eraser was used to create precise highlights that brought light into the portrait.
Colored pencils are often underappreciated because they are such a slow medium. An A4-sized piece can take me more than 40 hours of work, but in a world where everything happens so incredibly fast, the slowness of colored pencils is alluring-—a way to prolong the pleasure I feel recreating the creatures I have a passion for. —
About the artist
Andrea García Bruno
Andrea García Bruno is a Spanish realistic wildlife and pet portrait artist based in Madrid, Spain. Although the artist experiments with different mediums such as watercolor and graphite, she specializes in colored pencils since their precision allows her to better capture the details of the different creatures she depicts as well as their interactions with nature. Bruno only uses professional-grade materials with great pigmentations that produce vibrant and rich colors that will not fade over time.
She works from her small home studio, sharing her work on social media daily. Her original artwork and fine art prints are sold through a small Etsy shop. Each fine art print is made by a professional art printing house, using longlasting UV encapsulated pigment inks on cotton paper.
Contact at
wildlifeartbyandrea@gmail.com