Category: colored pencil

Two cats – beginning colored pencil

This is the start of the colored pencil work on this piece. It’s definitely a learning process for myself and I hesitate to even post this because it has such a long way to go! But I think it is really helpful for others to see how a piece like this looks from early on. It will take much more layering, with additional colors to match the fur, before it really starts to look right. So, you will get to learn as I do!

As you can see, I am starting with just getting the fur pattern blocked in, along with the beginnings of shading, making sure I put my pencil strokes in the correct direction to follow the fur. This is very important to making a pet portrait look accurate. The fur contour gives form and shape to the animal’s body underneath.

Woodland Peony – opened seed pod

I’m liking this Woodland Peony seed pod, so I’ve done another sketch. This time, the pod has burst open and spilled out most of the seeds. As before, I used pen and ink and colored pencil. It’s shape is so distorted from the original star-like pod that it is hard to recognize. When I first saw it I was surprised. I think I assumed the pods would crack open and the seeds fall out quickly (especially since they look so plump and heavy.) Instead it sort of inverts and the seeds appear to ooze away slowly.

Japanese Crane – Colored pencil

I was going through some old notebooks and found this rendering of a Japanese Crane (or Red-Crowned Crane) that I did in colored pencil several years ago. I drew it from a photo I took at the Amersfoort Zoo in the Netherlands. I remember originally not liking my rendering very much – I think I wasn’t pleased with the gray pencil I used in the middle of the body since the bird is very white. But looking at it on it’s own, not compared to the photo, it’s not too bad! 🙂 I thought it might be a fun thing to put up since I have been posting a lot of black and white lately.