Colored Pencils

This is a copy/paste comment from DA: http://comments.deviantart.com/1/78247470/662067514

My biology teacher was difficult to get anything out of because he's not a very good communicator, but he has a doctrine in animal illustration and he certainly knows his stuff. I did get a few things out of his regarding colored pencils, though.

He gave everyone in class a sheet of thin cardboard. Not the kind with the wavy stuff in it, it was more like really thick construction paper. The advice is that when you put something semi-soft like that under a picture you're using colored pencils on, you get less white specks from where the colored pencil didn't cover it up. I would imagine using a hot-pressed (flat) paper would discourage white specks, too. Never overlook the value of using good materials.

I had no formal training in colored pencils, but there's this nice little kind sweet lady in my class (who draws things out of my worst nightmares) who taught me a thing or two.

I say, "So how DO you use colored pencils?" "Why, the same way you use crayons!" "Oh, so simple!" I replied. "And, uh... how do you use crayons?"

She said the trick is layers. The first color you put down is simply the base color, and not the final color you expect to end up with. So color theory comes into play. You want a blue grey? Mix blue and orange. You want a firey yellow? yellow and orange and red.

When I use colored pencils, I find myself with a separate sheet of paper nearby, and before I start using color (and during coloring) I do layer tests to see what color I'd end up with. Put down a layer of one, and mark down that it was the first color I used. Put down another, and mark that one down. Didn't come out right? I try different colors, or switch the order around, making notes so I know the order I applied them in.

Also, depending on how hard you apply them you'll get different results. The harder you press down, the more you cover the paper, and the less a new color is going to effect it or even be able to lay over it. Colored pencils don't stick to themselves very well.

I tend to have a heavy hand, and when I was doing some hand anatomy drawings I discovered a neat (and somewhat expensive) trick. I'd do layers and layers and then at the end, I'd find that there were STILL some white specks. I was in a hurry, and I didn't have time to try to cover them all up, so I grabbed my "finishing" color and laid into the page. Hard. I put a clean, solid finish over the top (within the lines). My four drawings ate three pencils of the primary color. But MAN did they look good! The professor thought I'd actually painted a thin layer of gauche over the top. Maybe that would have been easier and cheaper. But paint scares me so.

Sadly, I had finished these at the last minute during finals week before summer, and I never saw them again. I did manage to get an A in the class, though. And at A at DigiPen is very hard to get. So I assure you they were very good.

unfinished