I felt very confident after watching a few Janie Gildow videos and reading her book on colored pencils. Granted I did not do a single suggested exercise...as that's not me...I like to just jump in and figure it out as I am going along. Most the time that kind of madness is fine but as soon as I got to Swains art store I felt like a fish out of water and felt myself getting very nervous!! Luckily I had already researched the type of paper I wanted to use as I only like to use papers with plant based sizing...so I headed first to the paper isle to get some Mi Tiente...man was it flimsy but okay...now to find a piece that wasn't totally bent up. Obviously since they are so thin it must be hard to handle without getting quite a few dents in it...note to self...try Dick Blicks art store next time!! Then there were a million Prismacolor pencils to choose from with no color chart in sight! Ugh!
But with my paper and pencils in hand I headed home to start!
I had already drawn out my tiger, now I just had to figure out how to transfer it onto green paper.
I rubbed an old 3B graphite pencil then charcoal over the back and transferred it that way, altho this method did not work very well as I could barely see any lines on the top portion of the paper. There has to be a better way to do this!!
My inspector, Dakota thought I did a pretty good job but still chewed up my paper and pencils when not paying attention! (never leave artwork unattended when there's a kitten in the house!)
I started with lightly redrawing the top portion then jumped in on the eye, and so on. Omgosh, was it fun! Messy yes, lots of wax everywhere and my tips kept breaking, so a lot of sharping...but boy time just flew by!! I made a few mistakes with placement and color but I just scrapped it and it worked out just fine!
This beast is night and day from graphite, actually once I got into a groove, lost all my trepidation regarding it I thought it was waayyy easier than graphite (in my humble opinion!) I wasn't slaving over a million details like I do with graphite!
I am definitely hooked but there is SO much more to explore with colored pencil and I am SO eager to try it all now that I am over my fears about it!
