Tuesday 14th February Fiona Nichols will be demonstrating how to use colour pencils to create vibrant pictures - this isn't coloured pencil as you know it!
Participants are asked to bring along their own coloured pencils and some good paper and she will show tricks and short cuts to producing interesting and original works. She'll also bring along some WIPs and some mistakes to show how we can learn from these and improve skills.
Participants are asked to bring along their own coloured pencils and some good paper and she will show tricks and short cuts to producing interesting and original works. She'll also bring along some WIPs and some mistakes to show how we can learn from these and improve skills.
USING COLOURED PENCILS
The key to
successful coloured pencil work is, after good drawing skills, layering. Unlike the process of using water-based coloured pencils, wax and
oil based pencils benefit from multiple layers: as many as your paper and
patience can take. This fills in the ‘hills and valleys’ of your paper and
brings richness of colour to your work. So, the process is fairly laborious but
ultimately rewarding.
CONSIDERATIONS
Tools. You don’t need 100 pencils to start. They blend, especially if restricted
to one make.
24 pencils are
fine to begin working the technique.
A good pencil
sharpener – as the sharper the points, the better – it can be manual, electric
or a cutter blade.
Masking tape to
hold your paper on the page. Also to ‘lift’ off pencil errors.
A burnishing
tool – a great way to blend colours. Remember the darker colours will push
through the lighter ones. Most pencil manufacturers produce a colourless
blender pencil.
A (household
style) paint brush to brush off excess pencil bits and keep work clean.
The right
paper: one that takes multi layers. Paper that doesn’t tear when removing
masking tape. HOT pressed paper is favoured – but it has limited layering
ability as it is smooth. Canson pastel paper. Or good watercolour paper. Or textured
paper. Fisher 400. The US-made Stonehenge is the most popular of all.
Size of work. Don’t think too big – at least in the beginning.
Under
painting. Just in tones. Or monochrome. Or in
opposite colours.
Under painting
in crayons, or in another medium? Acrylic ink. Watercolour. Acrylic paints.
Using solvents
to create move crayon around.
Order of
work. Light to dark is the rule – though tonal
darks can be blocked in first.
Where to
start: consider this first so hands don’t smudge
work.
Direction of
strokes. Haphazard. Cross hatch. Or parallel and
orderly. And orderly, vertical, diagonal etc
How to erase (if you need to). Tape. Rubber. Blue tack.
How to
protect the painting, as you work: Use a mahl stick
or sheet of greaseproof paper.
How to
finish work so it is transportable. Fixative? Use
of glass paper (or cheaper grease-proof baking paper).
RESOURCES
Internet
Coloured
pencil societies
www.cpsa.org
(USA)
www.auscpa.org (Australia)
Magazines
Color (Ann Kullberg) both paper and digital
Also
downloadable instruction kits
Colored
Pencil
both paper and digital
Check out
articles and works on Facebook, Pinterest, on-line groups, FREE YouTube pages
(download
these) and demos, online or downloadable courses such as those found
at Craftsy.com.
Where to buy pencils in SA
Write Shoppe: sells Austrian-made
Cretacolor (wax based)
The Deckle Edge: German-made Faber
Castell Polychromos (oil based) and tins of Derwent coloured pencils.
The Italian
Artshop: English-made Derwent (wax based) and
German-made Lyra (Rembrandt and also a wax based pencil).
Overseas
online supplies: dickblick.com (USA), saa.co.uk
(UK), geant-beaux-arts.fr (FR)
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