Sunday 26 January 2020

Snow Leopard

Colour Pencil on Toned Paper

The following is from one of the demonstrations and exercised I did with my recient class at Camp Creative, a Snow Leopard in the soft Prismacolour Premier pencils. I don’t use Prismacolour pencils often as I generally find them too soft, but I do like their ability to blend and layer over coloured papers. As I didn’t want the class to have to spend too much on different types of paper for this class, I brought along a pad of the Strathmore Tan paper A3 180gsm. This is a lighter weight paper than I usually work with, but is robust enough to take several layers of pencils. As it is a thinner paper it is possible (just) to use the trace method of transferring a line drawing via a light box or window.
Why draw on toned paper? Well, working on toned paper can lead to a very realistic result . Remember, just as there is no true black in life, neither is there white. There is the sun, and everything else is darker than that.  So if your paper is darker than white it gives you an edge in your tonal range. It is easier to push a dark on tone paper, and you can always add a white highlight if you wish. Mistakes made on the original drawing are easier to hide. Because you start with a tone, your drawing time is faster as you don’t need to draw that in, it is there for you. You draw the tonal range either side of the paper colour.
One drawback to toned paper is that it can affect the colour hue of your pencil when laid down. So you MUST do a test sheet of your pencils on your chosen paper. So this is how I began. The Snow Leopard image is a photo I took several years back at the Melbourne Zoo.


As you can see, the Prismacolour pencils worked well and were quite intense in hue compared to my preferred Staedtler Mars Karat pencils - although you can certainly mix the two together if you are lacking a particular colour in the Prismacolour range.

Here is the the final result:


Very shortly there will be a step-by-step post on Mike Sibley's website showing the development of this work - joining is simple and inexpensive. But if you wish, I have a pdf available of this progress, simply contact me and I will send it to you.



Friday 17 January 2020

Camp Creative 2

Wednesday & Thursday Morning

Wednesday is landscape day!  It can be fun to expand your work to express an open sky and full background. We discussed various ways to plan a composition for a landscape; how to maniuplate your reference to create a pleasing series of shapes, understanding the foreground, mid and background - and a few other hints and tips. We also looked at ways to create tone, using tortillon/paper stumps, hatching and scrumble effects and also using water soluble graphite pencils as a wash base. This landscape exercise had a mixed result with the students - about 1/3 loved it, another 1/3 hated it and struggled with it, and the last third were ambivilent. But love or hate it, all agreed it was worth the time to attempt the subject.

Haybales near Wattle Flat. Class demonstration, incomplete. Grapitint and 4B W/S graphite pencil plus HB, 2B & 4B graphite on Fabriano 300gsm hot press, A3.

Thursday Afternoon/Friday

Working on toned paper is also great fun - with a mid-tone grey or tan you can build your tones up and down leaving the colour paper to work as your mid tones. In this exercise students were given some Strathmore 180gsm Tan Toned paper and asked to use colour pencils to create an animal portrait or a human portrait of their own choosing. I demonstrated a quick portrait of David Helfgott, the patron of Camp Creative. We were lucky to see him perform for us on Monday night where I took a few mental notes and quick sketches. As well, the printed program had a good shot of David with which I based this work.
'David' Prismacolour pencils on Strathmore Toned Tan Paper - 1 hour demo.

I also started an animal portrait that demonstrated fur techniques. This is currently a wip and I hope to produce a progressive pdf of the work to completion.

'Snow Leopard' Prismacolour pencils on Strathmore Toned Tan paper - WIP

Tuesday 14 January 2020

Camp Creative

Monday and Tuesday At Camp Creative

Camp Creative in Bellingen, NSW has started - and it has been a wonderful start to the week. We are very lucky in that the weather is balmy and warm without being very hot. Just perfect in fact. 
There are 13 students in the class and each one is  a joy to work with. It is always inspiring to meet and teach people new methods and techniques.

Monday:
I started everyone off with tonal studies - as several are repeat students I didn't want them to have to redo the value scale exercises. So instead I asked each to bring in a plain, simple glass. This allowed me to cover a range of topics - drawing circles and forms in perspective, different grades of pencils, tonal values, reflections, and working dark to light.

Quick demonstration. 4B, HB, F, 2H graphite pencils. Less than an hour 

Then students took the same glass and concentrated on highlights only, drawing white on black.

Demonstration. White colour pencil, white charcoal pencil, white gel pen. 10/15 minutes.

Finally, again using the same glass, rendered in colour pencils. (wax/resin based)

Demonstration. Prismacolour pencils. Over an hour 

Tuesday
Building on the colour pencil lessons of Tueseday, students advanced to Aquarelle colour pencils. Subject was to be a botanical item. Once more perspective was discussed, especially showing how to draw flowers and forms from an angled or side view. Blending colours using water washes created by the pencils and then building on those layers with more colour wash or dry colour was demonstrated. This was an all day exercise and most students finished a drawing - some did more. All there results were darn great!

Demonstration. Actual leaf on left. Drawing on right in Staedler Mars Karat Aquarelle pencils.

Tomorrow - Wednesday, we will be looking at Watersoluble graphites and create a landscape image.

Monday 6 January 2020

My Fav Pencils are back!

Staedler Mars Karat Aquarell Watercolour


I love these colour pencils and have used them for decades - in fact for nearly 40 years! Brilliant colours that work well wet or dry. Excellent blending, good strong colour fastness. Nice hard leads that allow you to sharpen to a point and draw crisp hair lines. IMO these pencils are far superior to any other brand in the market. These are professional, top of the line, colour pencils.  Here is an excellent review on bestpencils.com. 

So you can imagine my dismay when I was told a few years back that Staedler Australia was no longer going to sell these pencils into art stores.  But someone at Staedler heard my pleas and they are now back! You can purchase them online at Officeworks throughout Australia or Bennetts who will also deliver Australia wide.

These are a professional standard, premium colour pencil and cosequently costly. But you get what you pay for, and although I don't need more, I could not resist and just purchased a brand new box of 60.

Oh! Pretty New Pencils! 😍

Why not indulge yourself and buy some... even if it is just a set of 12 or 24 I bet you will love them! Just remember, if you want the best, you have to pay for them.