I always wanted to try my hand at drawing with coloured pencils, after having seen some marvellous work by some artists. I saw one particular American coloured pencil portrait artists work and it was breathtaking. In fact, I was so impressed I wanted to learn to draw, that caused me a slight problem. I did not do Art in school. I was discouraged by my teachers as not being good enough to take the subject forward.
As a result of an online search looking for coloured pencil courses, I enrolled in the Coloured Pencil Drawing Course taught by Ida Mitrani and was taken over by Paul Weaver when she retired. I brought myself a small set of Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencils, and the rest is history, I awaited my materials and started my course.
I took longer to do the course than I expected due to reasons beyond my control. I had to add an extension in order to finish it. Ida retired and Paul took over both have been a great influence on my drawing ability gently guiding me in best practices and giving me wonderful hints on how to better my artwork.
Needless to say that after the first few drawings in Polycolour, I ended up owning a set of Luminance, Derwents Lightfasts and Prismacolours. All have different feels and mix some are best for sharper more defined work others are soft and creamy and blend well. I love mixing brands although I have enough pencils for now and not thinking of adding anymore to my collection.
As for paper, Clairefontaine Painting Multi techniques paper was used in the boat picture and my personal junk collection. It is not my favourite paper to use but I had some and it was the first type of paper I was able to get. The personal Junk collection where a group of items I had lying around beside my laptop and they were placed on a white paper on top of it. I really enjoyed doing that picture. The Boat was an interesting exercise which tested me to my limits at the time.
Here in Gibraltar there is only a tiny art shop which only stocks some Derwent so I usually buy mine online.
Aicha was done Strathmore Bristol Series this was a beautiful photo taken by a photographer friend of mine. It was a frustrating yet worthwhile picture to do. The most difficult part for me was the head dress that hung over her face and its shadows. In the end I tackled it first as I thought the face would be easier to do than the headdress and I was right.
The Hellebore vase and the Caleta Bay shoreline were done in Stonehenge. The Hellebore vase was lovely to do I didn’t realise how challenging the almost see-through petals where to do but Aicha prepared me well for that one with her veils. The Caleta Bay is one of our local beaches and the photo was taken by a friend of mine very early in the morning. I loved drawing this one. It was full of memories for me as it was the beach I used to frequent in the summer months.
My favourite papers to use Stonehenge and Strathmore Bristol Series mainly because of the amount of layers that they admit. this can be useful when drawing animals or portraits. One thing that I love to do when trying out new brands of paper is to try to see how many light layers of pencils they can hold before they burnish themselves. The more the better.
I really enjoyed doing this course and learnt quite a lot from it I am currently putting into practice all the comments I received and doing a portrait. I have done a few drawings of local places and a few of these drawings are for sale in a local photography shop. I would encourage everyone to try this course as it is an excellent course and coloured pencils and a drawing pad is very portable.
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