Playing with Colored Pencils

I thought I would share with you some of the sketches and drawings from my last class, Colored Pencil 1, at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

It has been interesting to learn the techniques of botanical illustration and some good tips that could apply to any drawing.

Working with colored pencils is very fun but it does take a lot of time to complete a colored pencil painting.

First, you do some loose sketches of your subject to get a feel for it.  Then you make a contour drawing, which is a basic line drawing.

We were creating 4 drawings on one page with small squares for this study so I had the corners drawn in to choose the composition.

The next step is to create a value study.  One of the tips I like is that you use tracing paper over your contour drawing for the value study.

What is nice about this idea is that you can play and change the drawings and details as much as you want and you don’t have to start from scratch when you are layering your drawing on tracing paper.

This is a rough value study.

And boy did I learn how important the value study can be when your subject is a perishable item like a vegetable or flower.  More than once I left my poor subjects in a baggie in my rolling back pack and they didn’t look so hot when they came out!

We use a light box to trace just the contour onto good paper.  I really like the Fabriano Artistico Hot Press Watercolor paper.

You continue to use your actual subject as you continue if you can and also the value study.

The process of shading and layering colors begins.  First, you have to test some of your color layering on a scrap to make sure you are getting the colors and values that you want.

That is part of the beauty of colored pencil paintings is that you don’t just choose 1 color and color it like a coloring book but you build up your colors by layers.

I didn’t take pictures as it was in stages but this is a drawing is almost complete.   I could go back and clean up the edges, add a border, etc.

This heirloom tomato was one of the fun finds I got on the most delightful day.