I took a 2-day workshop in colored pencil last weekend with a local artist,
Veronica Winters. She is an excellent teacher and I fully enjoyed taking her class. She began with simple, basic exercises: value studies; hue & intensity comparisons; drawing and shading oval shapes.
Next, she had us create a simple still life to begin drawing in preparations for colored pencils. She recommended
Strathmore Bristol Board, a smooth paper which I also use for both colored pencils and for pen and ink work. Below is my chosen still life:
My set-up. Note the small black & white pencil study on the left side of the page. That is to help me remember where the darks and lights belong.
She recommends doing an underpainting such as the masters did in oil paints for many centuries. Thus, for my green geranium leaves, the under-painting of shadows was done in red and orange colored pencils. Above, notice the middle leaf is colored only with those warm tones. Below is the completed still life - not yet cut down to size or matted!
Here's the image in black and white - it's much easier to see the values when viewing in black and white. Since I started and completed the drawing in day one of the class, this photo merely serves to show me where I am "off" in my values.
On our second day of class, we were to bring in objects or photos to draw and color. Since I had already drawn up a cat portrait of Lucy, complements of fellow blogger,
Nina, I was able to begin coloring right away. First is the value study, this time in blue. Since the cat is warm dark brown, the opposite color on the wheel would be a cold dark color, thus I chose Indigo Blue for the undertones.
Next, I began to add the warmer colors, laying the browns over the blue, adding yellow ochre and other tones to both lighten and warm up the drawing.
Then it was time to put in some basic preliminary details in the eyes, especially, while continuing to layer on the warmer colors of the cat.
Veronica (among others) recommends using mineral spirits to blend thick, dark layers of pencil. Often, the areas show distinctive line directions of the coloring, despite the fact that each layer is applied from a more or less different direction.
Below is the drawing, now nearly complete. The whiskers are added after all the dark and light colors have been applied. There's something not quite right about Lucy's eyes, so I'll be going back to work on that after my gardening and book editing is done. Well, the gardening won't be "done," and the editing will take all week, so I'll probably slip in some drawing time in the next day or two, while I'm still psyched up on the class!
My final drawing in the last hour or so of class was of this lovely, old glass bottle.
I used to enjoy painting glass objects in watercolor and that experience paid off in how quickly and easily this drawing came to life.
Veronica Winters has recently published her work in a catalog style entitled,
Life in Colored Pencil: Art Catalog by Veronica Winters and she is presently working on an art text book for university and college art classes. Because her teaching style is both complete and simply explained, I expect the text to be an excellent one for use by any artist seeking the basics and beyond. Veronica has a teaching degree from
Oklahoma State University, and has an MA in art from
Penn State University, State College, PA.
