Playing With Coloured Pencils

Hello Everyone,

I am dedicating this week (and maybe beyond) to playing with coloured pencils.  I dabbled with some water based tinted graphite pencils the other week and was really pleased with the effects.

In my art stash I found an unused tin of WH Smiths (British book/stationery shop) of water based coloured pencils.  I have had them for years and totally unused and I mint condition!!!!

Check Your Old Art Stash

I encourage you if you have not done any art for a while have a mooch in your store cupboards as I bet you have a few supplies you have not used in a while or in my case at all. Pull them out and have a play.

Back To The Coloured Pencils

I was tempted with black Friday sales to go and buy some Derwent/Faber Castell or Caran D’ache pencils but I held back and thought no I have this whole tin of 36 watercolour pencils untouched and they are perfectly good snout to play with so I started with a character sketch and decided on purple hair!

Dive Right In

I started applying the purple to the hair and that’s when I thought I should actually put in some proper effort and explore more.  I have just done the surface light and shade to get some definition in there for a basic sketch and I normally just leave it there but this time I am going to take it further.  I might find some exercises to do to practice with the pencils.  Here is the initial sketch and initial layer of purple hair. I will progress this into next week.

I will leave it here for now but to see my other sketches this week see my Instagram account @zoebadgerart.

Happy Sketching

Zoë