Colored Pencil Drawing of Magnolia Blossom

Beginning Again

You can see the white outlines on this drawing

Another Magnolia Painting

Starting the third magnolia blossom painting in colored pencil.

Quite a few people have asked how I develop a colored pencil drawing/painting. So I decided to walk you through the steps as I draw this one.

First step is to draw the layout on tracing paper. Why? because it is hard to erase on mat board, also hard to see a drawing on dark mat board and very easy to erase and move things around on tracing paper.

So the layout is done. I don't go into great detail here, just basic shapes, Do I like it? etc.

Inktense pigments have been "floated" into the basic shapes

Then I turn the tracing paper over. On the back I will scribble white colored pencil. When that is one. I will use drafting dots (or artist dots, depending on where to buy them) and fix the tracing paper to where I want it on the board, leaving myself a wide margin. This can be trimmed away when finished, but gives me a place to do any "practice" strokes and color combos if I need to.

With the white side down, I take a fine point pen and gently trace over my drawing, transferring the basic design to the mat board. I know a lot of artist who do this in detail, but I prefer to let the details develop and see what happens.

I always have the detail preliminary drawing to refer back to, but I am not married to it.

With these fine white lines I am ready to beginning building this colored pencil painting. You can see the faint white lines that will become leaves later on in the painting process. I will ignore this for the time being.

With this painting I started with Derwents Inktense drawing pencils. These are water soluble pencils that give good coverage with an ink pigment. A flat watercolor brush and water gets these flowing to give a good base coverage. This layer is pale, it is only the beginning.