Colored Pencil: A Complex Color Tool?
Everyone remembers being in elementary school and being introduced to the infamous colored pencil. You may have used them to color images on worksheets. You may have been forced to self-grade papers by your teachers (hopefully they didn’t require you to correct in red pencil like mine did!). You may have even used them to simply complete your assignments in a last-resort moment. However, how often did you use these to create colorful, painting-like drawings? Ever? I know I didn’t. But I have some amazing news. Colored pencils are an extremely useful tool in which to develop layers of color and illusion upon an image. In fact, there are even techniques attributed to drawing and coloring with colored pencil. Some of these techniques include:
Side shading- holding your pencil at a 45 degree angle to the paper and shading with the side of the tip. This yields a wider line.
Tip shading- as can be implied, shading with the very tip of the colored pencil
Hatching- making parallel lines with the colored pencil in close proximity to one another
Cross Hatching- criss crossing your lines to create varied direction and texture to your image
Scumbling- drawing series of overlapping circles to create shading
I am in fact creating my very own colored pencil drawing right now, and thought I would show you my progress. I hope it inspires you to consider doing one of your very own!
< This is the first image that shows my progress as I worked towards building up color and texture with the colored pencils.
< This is the completed image. To my surprise, the most difficult part of this drawing was blending and regulating the background ot make it look relatively smooth. Not easy with pencils!
