Friday 18 May 2012

Coloured Pencils versus My Sanity!


This exercise caused me the most problems of all so far. I tentatively started it by using water colour pencils. This rapidly became an excuse to mess about with water and lose all sense of detail. I don't think it is too bad a a quick sketch but it is not a coloured pencil study indicating form or tone.

















The next few attempts were with the coloured pencils and were a complete disaster. I could not get any colour, any tone and lost the will to live after a few hours of nick picking with a sharp point which was getting blunter by the minute. I could not get the colours to mix. How to get the creamy light on an onion with such hard colours? Where is Naples Yellow when you did it?..
This is the best of the bunch and an utter failure. An onion it is not! Disaster!!!















Time to ask for help. After an email to my tutor who very nobly rang me up, talk some sense into me and pointed me toward David Hockney, I decided to try again on coloured pastel paper. At least I could use the white pencil with more success and I took her advice in being more creative with the colours. The result is better but I don't like it.
It is on A4, life size and to me looks slick, unfinished, stuck and lifeless.

I feel that I am not going to be a fan of coloured pencils but they will probably come in useful for life drawing, or quick sketching. As I love using colour, they were very disappointing to try to mix, impossible to get any life into them. I will persevere but they are not my favourite medium.




The final result

No comments:

Post a Comment