Garden Moths Identified — 20 Watercolour Templates, Painted References + Colour Inspiration Cards (Premium Reference Set)

Moths are the ones nobody paints. That is exactly why they are worth painting.

Everybody paints butterflies. Meanwhile a Garden Tiger is sitting on a ragwort stem in cream, chocolate and orange-red, and an Elephant Hawk-moth is olive and rose-pink like something invented for a paintbox. This set is twenty of them, drawn properly, with a painted version of each one so you are never guessing.

Each moth is drawn to its own species — the real wing shape, the real markings, the real way that moth sits. A Buff-tip rolls its wings into a snapped birch twig. An Angle Shades crumples like a dead leaf. A Poplar Hawk-moth pushes its hindwings out in front. You are not painting a generic insect with the name changed underneath.

WHAT'S INSIDE

20 pencil-outline templates — soft grey lineart on white, A4 portrait, generous open areas to paint into:

Garden Tiger on ragwort · Elephant Hawk-moth on willowherb · Peppered on birch · Cinnabar on ragwort · Emperor on heather · Hummingbird Hawk-moth at valerian · Angle Shades on bramble · Brimstone on hawthorn · Magpie on gooseberry · Puss Moth on willow · Poplar Hawk-moth on poplar · Six-spot Burnet on knapweed · Silver Y on lavender · Large Yellow Underwing on grass · Swallow-tailed on ivy · Buff-tip on birch · Lime Hawk-moth on lime · Scarlet Tiger on comfrey · Oak Eggar on bracken · Herald on ivy flowers.

20 painted references — the same twenty compositions, painted loosely in each moth's own colours. Print one, prop it beside your paper, and match it. Or ignore it entirely and go your own way. It is there so the colour question never stops you.

20 Colour Inspiration Cards — one per moth. Each card shows five colours taken from that moth's painted reference, each with a plain descriptive name and a hex code, plus five "My colours" boxes for your own dried test swatches. They are colour inspiration, not paint recipes: there are no mixing formulas, because your paints are not anyone else's paints. Try your colours on scrap paper, let them dry and compare. Digital painters can type the hex codes into Procreate or any art app.

1 moth identifier index — a 4×5 grid of all twenty with names underneath. A quick reference, and a lovely page in its own right.

FORMAT

22-page A4 template PDF — cover, identifier index and the 20 templates. 300 DPI.

20-page A4 painted reference PDF — one painted moth per page. 300 DPI.

Colour Inspiration Cards — a 20-page A5 PDF, plus a zip with A4 and US Letter print sheets (two cards per page, with cut marks) and all 20 cards as 300 dpi PNGs.

Two PNG zips — every template and every painted reference as its own file, so you can print a single page without hunting through a PDF.

6 files, instant download. Yours to keep, reprint, and paint as many times as you like.

MADE FOR

Watercolour painters who have run out of flowers

Anyone who wants their moths to be recognisably that moth

Nature journalers and slow-Sunday painters

Beginners who freeze at the colour-choosing step

WANT THE WHOLE LIBRARY?

Garden Moths Identified is also in the Patreon Tier 2 & 3 watercolour drop, along with the other weekly watercolour sets. patreon.com/Artsydee

If you paint one, I'd love to see it. Tag @artsydee_inspiring_creations on Instagram.