Using Wax Blender Pencil

Working on a dark background can present real challenges for colored pencil. Unlike oil paints, you cannot count on pigments to overshadow the dark underlayment. Also, you do not get the reflective qualities of Titanium white, which is why canvases are usually coated in white paint before you start painting.

Titanium white is highly reflective. That is why it is chosen for this under layer. As the light passes through the layers of oil paint, it is reflected back and brighten by Titanium white.

White and super white papers perform the same function for colored pencils. Many do not realized just how transparent colored pencils are. But they are. Not as transparent as watercolors, but someplace more transparent than Quash. Now, you can get very good, very dramatic results using colored or toned papers and backgrounds, but you do have to know how to work with it.

For the small Heron drawing, on a dark toned paper from Colourfix, I am using a combination of studio white pencils, and a clear wax blender pencil from Prisma color. Putting down a layer of pure binder wax, which is what a blender pencil is, will give me a good base to blend in the many, many shades of white/blue and gray that make up this bird.

On this blue/gray background the pure wax is leaving a coating of white wax that will allow great blending. It will also add to the drama of the finished piece, acting as a reflecting layer underneath the pigmented layers.

Starting New Colored Pencil Pieces Part 2

 

Part 2

 

 Supporting the Art.

 

There are many, many surfaces you can use for colored pencil.

 

Anything you can drawing is valid. 

You can draw on paper, wood, copper, velum, tiles. There are few surfaces, however design with colored pencil in mind. Many multi-media papers list colored paper among the media acceptable, but many are actually difficult to use. 

What you choose depends totally on the end results you wish.  

Just about any surface that will accept charcoal or pastels has enough tooth to use. One consideration is just how much it can take. 

 

Charcoal papers tend to be thinner, lighter than pastel. With all the layering most Colored pencil artist do, most charcoal and even standard drawing papers tend to be too light and thin to take it.

 

Heavier pastel papers work well, and toned papers lend themselves to dramatic results.

I have been using Colourfix toned pastel papers for my more recent colored pencil pieces. They help to set the tone of the pieces, as well as providing excellent tooth and support for colored pencil. The rough, sandpaper finish provided more than enough tooth to hold multiple layers of colored pencil, and allowing the work and rework of the medium. It is also thick enough to allow the use of watercolor pencils, water, and solvent washes. All in all. a good choice.

For the Heron, I want the bird to stand out against the dim background, very similar to the mood of the location when I photographed the bird. It was in a dense forest setting, rather dim. And I want this feeling to come through the drawing.

 

For the landscape, I really want the humid, overgrown nature of the landscape to be highlighted. The medium toned paper will set the tone of the light, allowing me to go both darker and lighter. The photo was taken at the Brookgreen Gardens in North Carolina. Here, Many of the iconic plants of the south are on display.

 

 

 

 

Beginning a new Duck Drawing

New Drawing: Female Mallard

Working on Colourfix paper.

Sketch on colourfix paper

Working dark to light.

Starting with sage green colourfix paper, I used white to get the sketch onto the very dark surface. When working on a dark background I do find using vivid and light complementary colors helps to give the focal image more impact.

Note: Colourfix is a fine tooth Pastel and multi-media paper by Art Spectrum. This is an Australian company, but most on-line fine art retailers will carry it. I got mine from Cheap Joe's in North Carolina.

 It comes in a wide range of colors, formats and you can now buy the surface in jars to make your own papers. Worth trying for colored pencil.

 

 

http://www.cheapjoes.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=colourfix

Starting with the dark, I spent time studying the colors of the bird. I used shades of purple for the underpainting, purple, lilac and lavender Primsacolor pencils along with some of my studio whites.

Colourfix has such texture that you can use the cheaper, less satisfactory pencils in your stash in your underpainting. You can even use Crayola pencils.

I choose the colourfix sage green to enhance the feeling of dark undergrowth. These ducks were in shallow water in a very weedy stream.

This should give the feeling of deep, dark woods.

Already I can see way the duck will stand out in this image, even after I add the yellows and browns to the background vegetation. The duck will be the focal point. Yes I will have to add the details missing from the reference photo. That is ok. I am the artist and I can do this.



Underpainting and Reference photo

     With the purple underpainting, even when I add the browns for the feather colors, it will not be lost in the dark background color. With a good underpainting the colors will be richer and more saturated.



   I think this will be a good drawing.

Pelican in Flight

Starting, outline and beginning the background

Birds have always fascinated me. They are so different. Rendering feathers is totally different from hair and fur. And their body structures. To totally different depending on life styles, flight patterns, etc. So often when you really look at them you see such primitive body structures that have endured for thousands of years.


Having done a pelican roosting on a pier, the next one will be a pelican in flight. Here, you will be able to see the structure and breath of the flight feathers, wing span and attitude while it hovers in the wind.


While these are known as common brown pelicans, I find the range of colors and values on them fascinating. They are not a solid brown, but almost spotted and speckled going from almost a cream white to a brown so dark as to be almost black. the flight feathers are dark on the top, but a beautiful, silvery gray on the underside.



Starting to define Pelican

I had intended to draw it to matt to 11 x 14, a standard mat size, but I rather like the look of it coming out of the background, so will most likely have a custom matt cut, that allows it to come out of the "frame".

What do you think of a drawn border, bands of dark blue and gold?

Creating Depth with Colored Pencil

From now on there are no overall-even layers of color. To build believable images you need to add values to the colors, and this means being aware of light and shadow.

The body of a bird is basically a cylinder or column. It has depth, and you need to be aware of this. You also have to know where your light source is, and how this affects the color and shading of the bird. What parts of the bird are in full sun? which are in shadow, what is closest to the view and what is receding? All this affects color, changing its apparent value. Applying colors that remember this help to contour the birds.

At this point I am adding light fast Prismacolor pencils to my pallet. These pencils have high ASTM ratings and resist fading. I take hours, even days to weeks creating these, and go to a lot of trouble creating my drawings. I am concerned about their longevity. I want them to last—as in “am I dead yet?” I want them to be around when I am not.

There have been performance issues with these pencils, and I find their leads even more prone to crumble than with regular pencils. I never use an electric or battery powered sharpener with them. I use a hand held sharpener made for colored pencils, and I always turn the sharpener, never the pencil. You also need to be careful not to over sharpen them. Finish the point with a sandpaper pad or emery board. They are very rich in pigment.

Layers upon layers

To really get rich colors in colored pencil you have to be prepared to lay it on. This takes many layers of pigment. You also have to watch how you put the layers on. With birds, I switch back and forth between a small, circular stroke and short directional strokes. The directional strokes go in the direction that the feather lye, while the circular strokes are the between layers, where I need to build up variation in tones.

To help the body appear rounded, I put slightly darker layers at the outside of the figure, keeping the middle tones light and a bit orangeier. I also add a little indigo blue and nior black to the back where a cardinal is naturally darker. The indigo, applied lightly with the bloom takes on a more light grayish appearance, which is natural for a cardinal, with the Nior black lending itself to the receding areas of the back. This helps to shape the bird. These same techniques and principles apply to the singer.

Each bird took about 10 layers of pencil and blending to achieve this contouring.

Working in Yellow with Colored Pencil

Working on my drawing of the Meadowlark, I am going on to the focus of the drawing, and leaving the background.

Working in Yellow

For the singer, I treated the railing as more on the level with the bird itself. The background sky was done in cloud blue and slate blue, with tonings in white. Again, I did use a solvent to blend these colors together, creating that blue-gray sky I so vividly remember.

But on to the main event

The railing is very dark. It is an aged stained warped railing on one of those raised walkways over protected prairie land. So I started with a layer of white pencil. It might seem silly to put a layer of white on white paper, but it works. This creates a milky base for the darker colors I will work in on top. Then I started to grain it with light lavender. I am building color and texture here as carefully as I would in an oil painting. Maybe more carefully. Working back and forth between browns, I layer on Sienna, raw umber and more lavender. I use a paper stump to blend these together. I don’t want these melted together like the background, but to remain distinct colors as you would have naturally in aging wood.

Then I am ready to start on the bird. This is a western meadowlark. I had to post a photo on http://birding.about.com/ to make the identification; a very helpful site for nature artists.

As with the cardinal, building the correct colors and intensity of colors takes time and the use of several different colors.

Now this bird looks to be simply yellow, white and black. Again, there is nothing simple about it. The yellow is a complete yellow, very saturated, but also because of lighting and the fact that it is a real, living bird in a natural environment, there is variation is color value. The breast in the sun is bright, while that which is shaded or receding tends to be a bit cooler. So I started with lemon yellow, followed with sunburst, and slightly cooler, although not dark like an ochre. These were also blended into each other, so there are no hard edges between values.

As for the black banding, this also needs to vary from dark intense black, through raw umber and even some sienna. The black on the throat was built up with indigo blue and black, but this time without the Tuscan red underpainting. I needed to pick up other undertones on this one.

The shading on the belly presented another problem. Working on another sheet, I experimented with various ways of creating this shading. Simply using black or gray did not, of course work out well. Neither did using lavender. It just did not look real. A combination of raw umber and sage green gave the best results, after carefully blending it in. This layer was laid on very lightly and worked in as I went. By now, there were sufficient layers to allow me to do so.

As you build up colored pencil, you will tend to get a wax “bloom”. This is an almost chalky layer of wax that will separate a little when you use multiple layers of pigment. It is natural, and all artists learn to deal with it. Simply buffing it out does not harm to the artwork.

I actually used the wax bloom the next day to work in the shading, so I was able to make it look very natural, as if it is just the natural shading of a bird in the sun. You can often use what appears to be a drawback of a medium to your advantage.

Preliminary Sketches And True Shapes

Preliminary sketches are just that, preliminary. You can concentrate on the overview, locating the major lights and darks, or you can isolate the objects/subjects you are interest in drawing. Preliminary sketches let you explore the details and analysis what you are really seeing. They can and should do a lot of things. Any really good work of art should have several preliminary sketches.

It is ok when you are out to do sketches of single objects. It is ok to do general landscapes. Sketches should be the way you explore the world around you, so be free with them. By sketching often, you can quickly come to understand how things really work.

Concentrate On That Object

When you have a subject that really interests you, concentrate on that. Draw it from many angles. Simplify it. Take it apart. Look for the basic shapes that make up that object.

Using A Photo Reference

This is true, even when using a photo reference. Or especially when using a photo reference. Photos can be misleading. Take the time to really explore what you are looking at. Don’t just jump into drawing it. Think. Art happens in the head, not on the paper. The paper just shows the results.

When using a photo reference, make a black and white copy of it. In fact, make several. Use a copy machine or print it from your computer on common paper, not good photo paper. These are working copies, not art. When you make your copies, lighten and darken the copy. Lighten the copy and even enlarging it will reveal details in the shadows that might be hard to see.

I tend to use my own digital photography for reference, so I have the files to play around with. Also I don't have to worry about copyright.

[note: never, ever work on the original file. Always do a “save as” and rename the file. Me, I put work at the beginning so I know this is the file to play with.]

With my software, I have several options to convert  a photo to grayscale. (this is what you are actually doing, converting to true black and white is not what you want to do!)Usually I use the desaturate option, as this allows me to play with contrast. You will need to learn what is best with the software you have.

True Shapes

With these b&w copies, you are ready to work out construction problems. Here I am not talking about layout and composition, but how you are going to draw individual objects. One reason I like to make the copies of my references is that I can draw right on them. This is helpful in finding the true shape of something.

“I can see the shape” you say, but do you really? How many times have you drawn a vase, then look back at your still life and find you have not drawn that vase? Not so easy, is it?

Ok now stop and think about drawing a bird or a squirrel. Looks can be deceiving! Try it, get a photo of a common bird or squirrel, then try and find the edges. Most photos tend to lose the details in shadows.

So we have the black and whites. Here the lighter versions will be helpful. Draw the true shape of things. I like to use tracing paper for this. Lightly draw around the actual edges. Now look. Surprised? They are fatter/leaner than you thought. Using tracing paper isolates the shape from the rest of the context in the photo. It isolates it from distracting patterns and shadows. You will find this especially true with wildlife. Nature plans it this way. Remember their patterns are supposed to make it difficult to see their true outlines. It is a survival thing. Once you have the true shapes, it is easier to transfer this to your drawing.