Currently Browsing: Color Pencils 125 articles
In Context: Mixed Media Chickens
Sometimes it’s late and you want to get one more sketch in. I find this especially true when I’m trying to take a looser approach. Past bedtime—too tired to be fussy about details and accuracy—it’s a great time for one more sketch. But if something isn’t keeping you up I suggest you get to bed […]
Mixed Media Portrait on Toned Paper
If you’re going to play around with mixed media I encourage you to seek out toned papers. The strokes and values you achieve on the toned background make a fun departure from white paper. This sketch of an Earth’s World Fairgoer (who was wearing black lipstick) is in a hand bound journal I made with […]
Mixed Media View of the Backyard: Expanding Your Visual Vocabulary
It’s always a great idea to take a moment and look out the window. Our neighbors at the back of our yard have a lush growth of ferns at this time of the year. I turned the page in my journal and sketched on this pre-painted background—the verso page background was in the same vein […]
Mixed Media Portrait Supplies
Sometimes you work in watercolor and you pick up some color pencils too. It’s fun, why not? Especially if you spent your childhood working with color pencils. I started this portrait of a fairgoer from Earth’s World using a black grape Prismacolor pencil. (It’s not black, it’s not overly strident. I enjoy it. I also […]
Art Supply Gifts That Derail Your Practice
It happens a lot, according to my students’s stories. A friend or family member gives them a fabulous art supply gift—all the watercolor tubes in the Daniel Smith line; all the gouache from Holbein; all the color pencils in the Primacolor Premier line. And the artist recipient hits overwhelm. Having an abundance of new options […]
What’s Tinnitus Like? How to Protect Your Art Practice
What’s tinnitus like? That’s the question I’ve been dealing with since the end of 2023. If you’ve never heard (no pun intended) about tinnitus it’s a constant whirring, screeching, humming, noise in your ears. The day you get it and it doesn’t go away, you’ll remember that as the last day you actually heard silence. […]
Studies Don’t Have to Be Accurate to Be Useful
I used to listen to my students go on and on about not wanting to make studies from the great art masters because they couldn’t come close to what those masters created. Well duh. We simply don’t have those skills. But we need to remember that studies, even quick, seemingly sloppy or non-accurate studies are […]
Revisiting the Ultra-fine Tipped Pentel Artist’s Brush Sign Pen
This is sort of an “In-Context” post. You can read the text and see what I was thinking about. Yes I am having trouble getting out of “teacher-mode” and still making notes to myself about the various choices I’m making in art. (Well in life too.) I thought this portrait sketch was particularly contrary and […]
Drawing on Scraps of Paper
I love to draw on scraps of paper. As a bookbinder I have a ton of paper scraps leftover after any binding session. There are trimmings of course, but typically because of the way I want my handbound books sized, I fold and tear away bits from the main paper sheets before I start making […]
When Is It a Good Time to Sketch in Pencil?
Usually I answer the question “When is it a good time to sketch in pencil?” simply by saying “Never.” I reside in the camp of, sketch in ink, live with the odd-off strokes, the pentimento. Use it all to train your eye. But sometimes you want really smooth lines, or don’t want to risk missing […]