How to Draw Alum Bay and the Needles in Coloured Pencil

By Peter Weatherill

Alum Bay sits at the western tip of the Isle of Wight, where the chalk ridge runs out to sea and breaks into the row of stacks we call the Needles. From the down above the bay you look across heather and gorse to pale cliffs and that famous line of white rock. It is a generous subject: a soft, simple distance and a busy, colourful foreground, with plenty of room to make decisions of your own.

I have drawn this scene two ways, and this page covers both. The original is worked entirely dry point, the pigment taken straight from the pencil. The second is a larger version where I laid a watercolour pencil wash for the sky and sea first, then finished the land dry point. Read the dry-point method as the main route, and treat the wash as an option for when you want a smoother, more even sky over a bigger sheet.

What you'll need

This was drawn with Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. The colour names and numbers below are Polychromos, but any good range with a similar spread of greens, blues, a magenta and a dark sepia will do the same job. The point is the relationships between the colours, not the brand.

Paper. For the dry-point version I used a smooth printmaking-style paper, similar to Stonehenge. For the larger watercolour-pencil version, choose a smooth watercolour paper with a little surface size, such as a hot-pressed sheet. Note the one swap: Stonehenge takes dry pigment beautifully but does not take washes as well, so if you are going the wash route, pick the watercolour paper instead.

The scene, and where to start

Here is the photograph I worked from, taken from the down above the bay.

Transfer the outline, or draw it lightly by hand. If you are drawing it, mark the horizon line first, then the angled line under the cliffs. With those two lines correctly placed, the rest falls into position much more easily. Erase your pencil guidelines as you go; a few faint lines will be absorbed by the colour later, but you do not want graphite sitting under a pale sky.

The Needles themselves are small in this view but they are the point the whole picture leads to, so they have to be right. If you want more detail of those distant stacks and the lighthouse, work from this closer photo as well.

Two ways to begin: the sky and sea

The dry-point way. Rather than scribbling blue straight onto the sky, lay down dense Ultramarine on a scrap of paper, then lift that loose pigment with a piece of white felt and rub it gently onto your sky. This gives a soft, even, cloud-like film rather than pencil lines. Leave the fluffy clouds as white paper, and lift the tops of the clouds with an eraser afterwards to keep them light. Fill the deeper patches of blue with Light Ultramarine. If the sky looks uneven, you can settle it with a light burnish of white.

For the sea, work the blue in horizontal layers so the strokes read as flat water. Smooth the horizon line with a sharp point, and burnish it with white if it needs softening. Sometimes the horizon is lost in a heat haze, so do not be afraid to keep it faint. The darker band of shadow on the sea can go in later. As the water comes closer to you, swap to Cobalt Turquoise as an alternate shade, which warms and lifts the near water.

The watercolour-pencil way (for the larger version). On a bigger sheet, a dry-point sky can be hard to keep even, so I switched to a wash. Make up two thin blue washes on a palette, matching the sky, plus a warmer turquoise for the water. Wet the paper lightly so the wash does not dry too fast, then float a bead of thin colour across the top of the sky and work down to the land, taking it over the sea as well. Blot the clouds out with a tissue while it is damp. A second thin coat, worked around the clouds, deepens the upper sky.

Then mix a warmer thin blue for the sea and brush it in with careful horizontal strokes. Let everything dry completely flat before you go back in with dry pencils. If the horizon is too hard, lift it slightly with a small brush of clean water and a tissue, and add a rippled effect to the near water with dry-point colour once it is dry.

The cliffs and the distance

For the cliff top I used three greens, layered light to dark. A Grey Green to start, a darker but similar grey green (Cedar / Chromium Green Opaque) over it, and Apple Green to add brightness where the light catches. A little Green Gold dropped in here and there adds interest and warmth without making it gaudy.

Keep the chalk cliff face itself pale. Warm Grey II with a touch of white is plenty. The moment the cliff gets too strong in colour it jumps forward and stops reading as distance, so go carefully, and keep the colour on the lighthouse very restrained for the same reason.

Heather and foreground foliage

Start by applying your greens and a lilac across the foreground with a light, even touch, just enough to give a base for the detail to sit on. Vary the direction of your strokes to suit what you are drawing; short upward flicks read as plants, flat strokes read as ground.

Here is the key habit for the heather: your first colour down is the one that shows through everything after it, so lay a lilac undercoat first, then build the heather over it. Work the flower with short upward strokes of Light Magenta, then overlay Magenta to deepen the colour. Form the base of the shadowed area with Sepia. That green-and-lilac base underneath is what keeps the heather colour alive even when you put darks on top.

Building the darks

With the foreground established, build up the darkest accents. The exact shades of green do not matter much here; what matters is keeping your dark green base under the shadowed foliage and then putting Sepia, and finally a touch of black, on top for the genuinely dark spots. Work the bright highlighted edges back in with a fine point of black or sepia so the light reads against the dark.

On the left, I worked the heather with the two shades of magenta and shadowed it with dark green, then sepia, then Dark Indigo for the deepest notes. As you go, keep varying your pencil strokes to give interesting, irregular shapes; nothing in heather and gorse is tidy.

A habit worth copying: note in the margin of your page which colour you used where. When you come back to balance an area later, you can match it exactly instead of guessing.

Common mistakes

Carry on from here