Tag: Colored pencil lesson

Tricks and Troubleshooting…

  1. Rubber shelf liners are perfect to lay under your work area.  The rubber like quality will keep your pencils from rolling in the floor and breaking.
  2. When your lead is broken in the shaft.  you can wrap the pencil in a paper towel and microwave for a few seconds at a time.  When your pencil is very warm to the touch, lay the pencil to the side until the wax/oil hardens.  (the broken pieces will melt and harden back in to one piece)
  3. Can’t find that perfect colored paper?  Simply paint your white paper with a watercolor wash for custom colors.  You may need to do a test on scrap to make sure your paper doesn’t buckle.
  4. Always wear a max when working with solvents and in a well ventilated area.  Even if the solvent is odorless the chemicals are still in the air.
  5. Dust off your pencil after every sharpening to avoid smearing the color dust on your work.
  6. Workable fixative will add more tooth to your paper.
  7. Unless the drawing aspect of your painting is off, keep going no matter how bad you think it looks.  The painting will have  ugly stages. It is during the ugly stages when most  gives up. DON’T ! Keep going until you are either satisfied or have no more tooth left to work with.  I have to remind myself of this constantly, with any medium.
  8. If you lose you whites, you can go over that area with a little gouache or a white Stabilo pencil. Be aware!  If you use these methods, your piece becomes a mixed media for contests in most cases.
  9. If your pencil is too short, super glue your pencil stump  to a longer colored pencil of the same color.
  10. I learned this lesson the hard way!  If have to trim a brand new pencil, make sure the color the number and color is on the opposite end of where you are sharpening.

 

I hope you have enjoyed this little mini series. I certainly enjoyed sharing.   If you want to learn anything that I glazed over, it can be found easily on the internet.    Best of Luck in Colored Pencil endeavors!

Other Lessons:

Color Wheel and Color Theory

Techniques 1

Techniques 2

Mixing Colors

Mapping Color

More on Colored Pencils

Be Well and Happy!

More on Colored Pencils.

pencils

Lighfastness

Lightfastness is how fast the colors lose their vibrancy and fade due to chemical breakdown in direct sunlight.  Most if not all colored pencil manufacturer’s have some pencils colors that are more robust and handle the sunlight better others.  Some artists will choose pencils that are more lightfast.  All mediums stand the risk of fading as well as anything exposed to UV rays.  My opinion is, anything with any pigment or dyes exposed to the direct sunlight will fade over time, so I don’t concern myself too much.

To aid in preventing your art from fading, Don’t hang your art near windows and doors. OR Make a print of your art and store the original in dark, dry place at room temperature.

Wax Bloom

Wax Bloom is the oxidation of the wax creating a white cast of film over your completed art.  To combat this:  First wipe your art down with a dry soft cloth and spray with a fixative.

Next week will be the last post in this series. Below, you see prompts for you to color map and paint.  It is not necessary to use my prompts.  Walk around your home.  Choose simple items in color and design, paint the items in your purse, tool bag, or junk drawer.  Choose anything, everything.

  1. leaf
  2. light bulb
  3. tree bark
  4. your favorite beverage
  5. all or part of a remote
  6. your front door
  7. a tube of lipstick / chap stick
  8. a tool
  9. a kitchen utensil
  10. a cookie
  11. sunglasses
  12. gloves
  13. jewelry
  14. a child’s toy
  15. a coaster
  16. a candle
  17. purse / wallet
  18. comb
  19. a colored pencil
  20. breakfast food
  21. favorite keepsake
  22. snack
  23. hairbrush
  24. a book
  25. nail file

I can’t stress enough how important it is to be proficient in mapping color.  It may be a pain, but it is so easy and helps you stay quite a few steps ahead of the game.

Other Lessons:

Color Wheel and Color Theory

Techniques 1

Techniques 2

Mixing Colors

Mapping Color

Enjoy!

Until Next Week….

Be Well and Happy!

Mixing Color

photo

Mixing color was my Achilles’s  heel.  I had so many colors, yet I could mix the right hue.  I know that a color doesn’t have to be exact but it didn’t stop me from want to copy that exact shade or wanting to throw my pencils in the woods when I couldn’t.  There are times when mixing the right hue (like skin) is pretty important and I just could not do it!

Now I find mixing color easy and I almost always mix the color right on the first try.  And instead of cursing all of my pencils and I am very happy that I have so many options.

By now, you should be well acquainted with your pencils. And remember the Color Family Sheets?  This is where they become integral in color mixing.

Value Finders

Black

   Value finders are small business card sized (card) stock in white and black with a hole in the center.  The finders are used to block the colors that surround the color that you want to mix.  It also changes how your mind interrupts the subject.  For example, Let’s say I am painting a gold candle holder.  If I look at the candle holder, my mind tells me  to pick up that gold metallic pencil. It’s gold right? I paint it gold.  It looks nothing like the holder, and I’m completely lost.

 This example is commonplace.  People have a hard time trying to wrap their head around seeing the color through the metal.  But, if I take that same candle holder and I place a view finder on top,  I don’t see the object or the values surrounding that object.  I only see the area color that I want to duplicate.  I paint the holder with  some ochres and goldenrod, maybe a little Jasmine and a couple of greens. Now,  I have a realistic gold.

Color Mixing

In colored pencil there are no formulas. Well, there is kind of, but that is dependent upon you.  Some people can achieve the desired hue using a couple of pencils and others it take more. It just depends on the way you see the color and the pencil combination that you choose.

Although mixing colors in colored pencil is not really an exact science, I will show you how I mix color as well as my thought process.  It’s simple and I have yet to find a  color that I can’t mix.  AND I found that this is so much fun, that I ran out of chips and went back to Lowe’s to get more.

The color I am mixing is 5002-108 Pool Party from Valspar. I am using the back of an index card, 132 Prismacolor set, and my color family charts.

tb

As I lay the chart over the swatch, I notice that true blue from the blue family is the closest match to Pool Party. After, I painted true blue I noticed the color wasn’t deep enough and I needed a deeper blue.

tb mb

  I added a layer of Mediterranean Blue and the depth is close, but not close enough. I still needed a deeper blue.

tb mb s graayI added a layer of slate gray. And now I have the depth I need, but it too dull.

tb md b slate g true blue I added a layer of true blue to get the vibrancy back.  Remember, In the beginning I chose True Blue because it was the closest.
And there you have it.

I mixed this color in 4 layers using 3 pencils.  I hope you noticed that I used the same color family. The fact that these pencil colors were in a row, is an accident.  My family is not in any particular order. 

So to recap:

1.)  Find the closest match to color you want to mix.

2.) If you need to lighten  choose a lighter hue or darken choose a darker hue, but from the same family

3.) Add your closest match back on top.

Which brings us to your next lesson. 

Get your chips, pencils and color family charts and start mixing.

Use your drawing paper, index cards or whatever you can find. Draw 1 in. diameter circles and fill those with your color mixes.

You will be doing this for a bit!

Other lessons:

Color Theory and the Color Wheel

Techniques 1

Techniques 2

Enjoy!

Be Well and Happy!

Techniques Part 2

   I hope that you have found Techniques Part 1 helpful.  If you have mastered the circular stroke then you are well on your way! In my opinion that is the most important one to learn.  I didn’t let you in  on my little secret because all of the strokes will come in handy at some point whether you use graphite, pastel, or colored pencil.

Part 2 of the Techniques lesson is a little random, but still it’s information that is important in getting started with colored pencils.

Erasing

Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?

The bad news is colored pencil can not be completely erased.  You can lighten the marks a great deal, but a slight tint will still remain.  That’s not to say that you shouldn’t try to remove mistakes, but be very careful, very gentle and keep in mind, that you will probably destroy the tooth of the paper before you remove the pencil in its entirety.   Keeping your layers light will help in removing mistakes because a light layer is usually sitting on top and not in the tooth of the paper.

And I don’t have any good news except making big boo boos may force you in to being very creative in making them less noticeable.  The types of eraser excellent for colored pencil are:

1)  A kneaded eraser –  Stamp the eraser on the mistake will lighten color.  By stamping,  I mean roll the eraser in a ball and hit the offending area gently.   Poster Mounting putty works well too.

2)  A battery operated eraser – IS the bee’s knees!  It’s a little rough on the paper so go easy.  Excellent for negative drawing, highlights, and whiskers.

3)  Removable scotch tape – It’s not an eraser, but it  works well in removing color.  Gently place the tape on the color you wish to remove and then color with a pencil in the area on top of the tape in which you want the color removed.  Remove tape.

****F.Y.I.  If working on black paper ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS use a black eraser.  White, red, or gray erasers will actually stain your paper the eraser color.

Impressing

6Is the best way to produce clean lines in artwork, for example:  Animal whiskers, veins of leaves, and feathers.  If you want white lines,  then this should be the first step.  But,  if for example,  you have a leaf with light green veins.  First, you color the area in a light green (or a light green mix), impress your lines, then proceed to your normal painting.

To impress, place a sheet of tracing paper on your drawing.  Use a 2H or a 4H pencil and with heavy pressure  draw the lines that need impressed. Remove the tracing paper and paint your art as normal.  You should have clear lines as if by magic 😉

Don’t use such heavy pressure that it cuts the tracing paper.

***F.Y.I. Impressing your signature, is great to use with a dark background.

Sgraffito

5Sgraffito is a technique used to scrape out a color revealing the color underneath using an exacto knife. The wax in colored pencil is soft  and it takes very little effort to scratch out color.  It is used for scraping out lighter grass, veins of leaves, hair etc.  Keep in mind the paper has to be pretty saturated with color for this method to really be useful.

Burnishing

1Burnishing is used to give your art a shiny appearance such as metal, glass, some fruits and vegetables etc.  It is the very last step because after you burnish it is rare that you can layer more color on top of the burnished area.

To burnish is to use heavy pressure and saturating your paper with so much pigment and wax that it obliterates the tooth. The artist can burnish many different ways, such as using a paper stump, a colored pencil of a different color and a colorless blender.  A colorless blender is a wax based pencil with no pigment.

Blending

2Unlike acrylic, watercolor and oil which is mixed in a palette, colored pencil is mixed directly on paper. To blend you can either use the Colored Pencil Strokes from the previous lesson or just lay the pencil point on its side to achieve even coverage.  And in the blending of two or more colors,  is where your knowledge of color theory may come in handy. You can also blend with solvents such as:

1.)  Gambasol – use with a paint brush, q-tip, cotton pad or paper stump in a well ventilated area.

2.)  Prismacolor’s Clear Blender – It’s like a clear magic marker.  To keep the tip clean between colors and after use, mark sides on a clean piece of white paper.  If you do not do this step, your marker is stained with the previous color and ruined.

This weeks lesson:

1.) One and Two Color Graduations.

43Starting with a sharp point and heavy pressure, saturated one end of your rectangle with color.  As you progress toward the middle use lighter pressure and fade out.  (If you are having difficulty, try moving your hand up the pencil shaft)For  two color graduations fade out  2/3 of the way through. Then, on the opposite side start the other color.   (The samples above are True Blue, Process Red and Lemon Yellow.)

On your drawing paper draw many 3/4 x 3 in. (approx.) rectangles and in each rectangle  Paint one color graduation and two color graduation bars using colors from the color wheel.

2.)  Take a trip to Lowe’s, Home Depot (or maybe Walmart)  and pick up paint chips in Flat.  Semi Gloss, Satin or Gloss are too distracting.  Pick up as many different samples as you can.

Also See:

Color Theory and the Color Wheel

Color Techniques Part 1

Until next week…

Be Well and Happy!