Landscape In Ink And Coloured Pencil, Helen Hanson - Book Review

Here's the review of the second of the three books on coloured pencil that I got for Christmas.  It's a 160 page paperback and is not just about a new subject matter (landscapes) but also includes a second medium (ink).  That ink can be from rollerballs, markers, dip pens, twigs dipped in ink, fountain pens (presumably) so my rollerball pens have me covered.  The bookmark in the photo isn’t included - I put it down on top of the book and was shocked at how it blended in, so left it there.

There are twelve chapters in the book but I think they can be broken down into about 70 pages of introduction, 40 pages of tips and 50 pages of demonstrations.  Let's talk about those three chunks.

What I'm calling the introduction takes up five chapters.  There's some stuff in there on equipment.  This includes an interesting comparison of the best coloured pencil brands.  The most interesting bit for me is always the paper as there seems to not be a general consensus on what's best.  I was glad to see that Helen had tips for what to use with coloured pencil on its own as well as what to use for coloured pencils with ink.  There's also stuff on going outside looking for good source material and on composition.  Then there's the mark making, both with the ink and the pencils.  Burnishing gets a mention but Helen points out that burnishing is all about flattening the paper, not about mixing.  For mixing without flattening, I need paper stumps and I've just ordered some of these.  And then there are advanced techniques like embossing, sgraffito and lifting out.  It's a decent introduction.  I'm not sure it would work as a a complete introduction to a newbie though - while Helen tells us to be light with the pencils and that extra layers are better than extra pressure, I don't think this was hammered home hard enough for a complete beginner.  Still, this probably isn't a beginners' book, so no harm done.

We then get to the middle of the book, the meat in the sandwich.  Four chapters on how to do an ink and coloured pencil painting.   There's stuff on putting down an initial drawing; not a chapter on how to draw but one on what ink and pencil marks to actually put down.  And there are tips on drawing trees, water and sky and how to integrate the two different media together.  There's an amazing chapter on how to do detailed drawings of foreground material like stones and grasses - Helen’s style is all about having detailed stuff like this in the foreground and less focus further back.  And then there are the final checks on whether a painting hangs together and what to do if it doesn't.  In all this section (and in the introductory chapters) the tips are tightly packed together, like in a Liz Chaderton book, and there seem to be more words than in normal art books - this took longer to read than other, breezier books.

And then we get to 50 pages of demonstrations.  As usual, I found myself drifting away at times when reading these, although I did learn from them.  A lot of the time, the demos served as illustrations of the lessons from the middle of the book.  The biggest of those lessons, for me, was probably the way that Helen paints the foreground before the background and the darker areas before the lighter ones - in both cases the opposite to what I do in watercolour, so something I definitely needed to learn about coloured pencils.  Somewhere at the start of the book, Helen makes the point that people will learn more by creating their own works than by copying other people, which had me punching the air in delight.  And throughout the demonstrations (which are worded as demonstrations, not as recipes) she keeps emphasising this point, telling readers that they don't have to go out and buy all the exact colours in the demos but can use similar ones that they already have if they really need to copy the demos.  And at the end of the demos, when Helen says she had to darken an area to get the balance right (or whatever) she says that's what she needed to do to her painting and that readers will have different problems that they'll have to sort out.   It I expect that message will be lost to the recipe followers.  After reading the Lisa Ann Watkins book, this all represented a refreshing change in style.  While the demos weren't the most useful bit of the book to me, they were still inspiring and there was enough useful stuff in the first 110 pages that the demos were just a bonus.  And there are always people complaining on Amazon about any art instruction books that don't include detailed recipes, so maybe this was all about keeping the peanut gallery happy.

This was, without a doubt, the best book I've read on coloured pencil so far.  It teaches things the way I like to be taught.  Lots of tips and examples of how Helen has used them, rather than a set of instructions on how to exactly replicate her art.  It's close to being a good introduction to coloured pencils but not quite there.  I do think, though, that it's a great introduction to coloured pencil landscapes, even for someone not intending to supplement the coloured pencil with ink, although it helps if the reader's interested in these detailed foregrounds.

I've not only learned a lot from this book but am feeling enthused and energised at starting on some coloured pencil landscapes over the weekend.  And you know what that means?  Five palettes.

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Drawing Animal Portraits On Coloured Pencil, Lisa Ann Watkins - Book Review

I've finished reading the first of my Christmas books.  This was a 144 page paperback, one of those paperbacks with the glossy covers that are a few inches too big and bent back inside, so will never end up dog eared.

Contents-wise it's roughy split into three equal pieces: an introduction, then two sets of exercises on studies and portraits.

First up is the introduction.  It includes some stuff very specific to this book's subject matter on how to get good source photos.  And then there's obviously stuff on materials, mark making, colour.  This is the third book I've read on coloured pencils and I'm amazed that I keep learning things from these introductory chapters, something that I very rarely do with introductions to watercolour books.  I like how Lisa described drawing surfaces as mountains and valleys and used this to explain their capacity for holding colour.  There was also some useful stuff on the pressure to apply and on how to tell when the surface is full to capacity.

The second and third chapters are quite similar and worth describing together.  The chapter in studies refers to doing paintings of individual elements like eyes, noses and fur.  This is something I've seen in a Jean Haines book but Jean made the very important point that if you can get an animal's eyes right, you're well on the way to a likeness and, indeed, Jean often stops early without drawing a whole portrait.  Lisa, though, doesn’t make this point, presenting the studies, instead, as just one of lots of things that have to be just right in the final portrait.

I always like to comment on where books like on the instruction vs demonstration spectrum.  Lisa is right up there at the instruction end, as extreme as I've ever seen anyone.  She tells the reader exactly what pencils to use (colour and manufacturer), what surface to draw on, even what technique to use in each exercise to transfer the shapes from the source photo to the drawing.  I like instruction books that set us exercises and books that do demonstrations but Lisa's modus operandi here is I'm going to do a painting and you have to copy everything I do religiously.  Not my cup of tea.  I'm not surprised when books like this get reviews on Amazon from people complaining about having to buy loads of gear.  It's the only way to learn if you're buying into Lisa's mode of teaching.  Me, though, I don't buy into that.  Instead, with books like these, I'll treat those follow me exercises as demonstrations and look for lessons from them.

And there are lessons there.  I counted six.  The most interesting thing for me was the number of layers that Lisa uses in paintings.  She'll put on (say) six layers of different colours and then I'll be expecting her next step to be burnishing but instead step 7 will be to repeat steps 1-6 several more times until the surface feels like it can’t take in any more colour.  This is very different to what I've seen in the first two books I've read on coloured pencils.  In fact Lisa doesn't mention burnishing at all in her book.  This feels like the biggest takeaway from the examples.  I say that, but the photos in the examples are also useful.  There are so many places where the photo looks like somewhere I'd be happy to stop but where Lisa carries on.

Just as with the Arlene Steinberg book, I found the demos to be a bit boring and repetitive after a while.  I did wonder why there were so many but I think I found the answer.  In this book, the five full portrait demos (two dogs and a cow, horse and cat) were on four different surfaces and I think Lisa wanted to demonstrate how the approach to all these different surfaces differed.  In which case, I wish they’d had labels on the contents page like how to paint on crescent suede mat board rather than how to paint Brandy, the red Angus cow.  When the same techniques apply to different animals but different techniques apply to different surfaces, it would help if the author made this clearer by how she structured things.

I'm dotting about a bit here, but there's something I was a little disappointed to find missing from the book.  And that was about getting down a good initial drawing.  There's lots of talk about all the different ways of using tracing paper (yes, there are lots of different ways) but nothing about drawing freehand or even about copying images using grids.  So, bit of a hole there in my humble opinion.

The artwork in the book is amazing. Not as unrealistically photorealistic as someone like Alyona Nickelsen (thankfully), so some artists will be inspired by it and aim for something of similar quality.  It's almost certainly beyond my reach, but even if I can never get there I can actually see the direction I need to head in.

Overall, I learned stuff from this which will change the way I use coloured pencils.  Despite my issues with Lisa's instructional style, this means it scores a respectable three palettes.  I still dream, though, of coming across the perfect beginners' book on coloured pencils at some point.  After reading this one, I wonder whether that book I'm looking for might not even be marked up as a beginners book but instead be about a particular style or subject matter and have a really great introduction.

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'Andles For Forks

And here's today's second painting.  It's Candle as the model again and this is her fourth appearance.  This time it's my second attempt at using the Artgraf blocks.

Just as before, I drew the figure three times, using the yellow, red and blue blocks with some twisting to vary line widths.  Just as with the oil pastel work earlier today, I did the drawings freehand, with a grid on the source photo not on my paper.  Oh, and this one was on watercolour paper rather than the cheaper stuff I use with the inktense pencils.  I tried to put down a lot less pigment today than I did yesterday.

When it came to wetting the marks, I used a smaller brush than yesterday and tried to sculpt the 3D shapes rather than just wetting the 2D shapes.  And things just went really badly.  I'm not sure whether the blue is just really strong compared to the red and yellow or whether it was all down to me not keeping the water clean but everything was coming out dark and blue.  I tried hard to wet the reds and yellows and brush them into the blues but with no luck.

Still, lessons learned.  When I say be gentle with the colours, what I really mean is be gentle with the blue.  That's what I'll do next time.

In terms of colour keys, my Artgraf colours include a cool blue, two cool reds and a warm and cool yellow.  So if I only use the cool yellow the painting will be in the key of green cool and if (like today) I only use the warm yellow, it will be in triadic left.  Of the two, I find that triadic left generally makes for more colourful paintings.  Not today though.

But you know what?  This painting has grown on me.  I’m liking the colours.  They remind me a bit of some of my abstracted Western scenes where I fill figures in with starry space backgrounds.  But, unlike the figures in those paintings, this one has some 3D form.  Those creases on the right side of Candle's waist help.  So do some of the white, yellow and red areas, which look like highlights with the light coming down from the top right.  This one's going up for sale.

Candle In Oil Pastel

I'm not in the mood at the moment to take my time and come up with perfect paintings.  I'm feeling loose and energetic and wanting to rattle off some fast, energetic works instead.  Today, I tried to follow an exercise from the Bill Buchman book, and for starting material I used the same pose from Candle as yesterday.

I followed bill's instructions pretty well at first.  I put down the drawing without putting a grid on the paper, although I admit I worked from a photo with a grid to help me put my first marks in the right place. I first drew the figure with a tiny spare chunk of yellow oil pastel, then the same with red, then blue.  In all three cases I would twist the chunk in my fingers to vary line thickness.

What I ended up with wasn't too bad and is where I should have stopped, but I disobeyed instructions and carried on.  First I tried some finger smoothing to harden some of the edges.  Then I used white oil pastel to smooth out some colours in highlighted areas.  Then I did loads more finger smoothing.  I thought the painting was missing a bit of yellow, so added more of this at the end and tried to smooth it in.

The final result was just a bit bleh.  If there's anything encouraging about this it's the gestural shape to the bottom but otherwise it's like something that's been rushed with little or no care.  Which it was.  But at least I can say that I completed one of Bill's exercises, even if I carried on working and ruined it.  To be fair, Bill does say in his book is that knowing when to stop is the difficult bit.

First Go With The Artgraf Colours: Candle

I wanted to have a quick go with the Artgraf colours today: see what they were like.  I thought I'd start with some figure drawing, so chose a pose by Candle.

My idea, based very loosely on two or three ideas from the Bill Buchman book, was to throw down three loose outlines, first in yellow, then red, then blue without worrying too much about whether they were all in exactly the same places.  Then to dilute my marks and see where I ended up.

I started by putting down a pencil outline as a guide.  This was a big mistake.  How were my three coloured outlines supposed to be out of sync with each other in places when they were all trying to follow pencil outlines?  My second mistake was to add too much colour.  I should have learned from my experiences with Inktense pencils that I need to apply minimal levels of colour before adding water.  But I became obsessed with another idea from Bill's book, which was to add some swooshing lines with the edges of the blocks to make some of these body parts look cylindrical.  This would have been a great strategy using charcoal (which Bill probably was doing) but not with a dilutable dry medium.

When I came to wet the paint (using a combination of water flicks, wet towel dabbing and brushing with water) I was shocked to discover just how much pigment I'd put on the paper.  These Artgraf blocks contain loads more pigment than even Inktense pencils.  With the amount of pigment I'd used, everything went opaque and a bit muddy, although I could see that there would have been some great colours in there if I'd used the blocks properly.  I tried adding more of the yellow, red and blue in places by using the blocks like watercolour pans but only got very marginal improvements.

Overall, there's some looseness, energy and colour in there.  All the things I was wanting to see.  But they're all more muted than I'd like because I've used too much pigment.  This one was successful as a learning exercise but not as a painting.  I need to have another go at something similar and see what happens when I hold back a bit more.

Christmas Art Stash 2022

Happy holidays everyone!

I thought I'd put up here all the new art gear I've been gifted today as it's a bit of a sneak preview of what to expect in 2023.

You'll see in the picture above:

- a new brush.  It was a size that I needed.  Not much to say about that.

- three new books.  All on coloured pencil.  I'll be posting reviews on these once I've read them and made notes.

- two supergranulating Schmincke sets.  There's a set of tundra paints; I've been using tundra during 2022 and my colours were going to need topping up soon.  And there's a new set, the desert colours.  I'm looking forward to trying those out and am expecting them to create hot atmospheres without me really trying.  I also still have the Shire colours in my collection.  Both these sets I opened today are in the 15ml tubes in fancy wooden boxes and ooze luxury.

- finally there are two sets of Artgraf colours, nine colours in all.  These are highly packed graphite colour blocks like tailors' chalks.  They can be used as pans or can be drawn with and the marks wetted afterwards.  I may use them as pans for dash and splashes or could try drawing figures or portraits using not just the corners but also the edges.  I can't wait to use these, probably trying out some ideas from the Bill Buchman book.

Steps Up From The Street, Hartlip

The World Cup is over and there's only four days to go to Christmas.  It's hard not to switch to wind down mode and watch Westerns all day but I do need to get back to painting with some regularity.  Today I went for the oil pastels and picked a scene that I walk past most days.  It's a set of steps from The Street, Hartlip up to somebody's back garden.  People must walk past them all the time without noticing them but they make a great painting subject.

I put down a starting drawing in pencil.  I did use a grid and worked upside down but the grid was only three squares by four, so nowhere near as fine as what I've been using for portraits.  I then went over some of the more important lines with the black oil pastel.  I didn't erase any pencil outlines or grid lines - there's no point if they're all going to be covered up.

After that, I just worked from the back of the painting to the front.  For most of the layers I started by putting down lots of spots in different colours.  For the sky, this was just white and my lightest blues but for the wooden fence, tree trunks and concrete, I threw in just about everything.  Once I had enough spots down, I smoothed them out with my finger, sculpting the paint as I went, with finger strokes in the most appropriate feeling directions.  For the sky, some of this smoothing was done with a white pastel to get things even lighter.

The gate and the foreground greenery were the exception, not being smoothed.  The gate was drawn in with raw umber and a bit of white for highlights.  The greenery was stabbed in with lots of colours, most of them greens and yellows but also a bit of red deep and delft blue, my favourite two colours.  Some very thin branches were added in a dark green.

I also used the scalpel in this one, not just by scraping out twigs in the foreground greenery bu5 also to mark out wooden slats in the fences: I drew in some thick lines in raw umber, then tried to scrape them partly off to leave a hard edge down one side of the line.

As a final step, I added more red deep and delft blue wherever they were missing.  These colours play a huge part in my oil pastel paintings and their influence needs to be felt everywhere for balance.

I see this one as a success and it's up for sale.  The colours in the tree trunks, concrete and wooden fences do it for me.  It's hard to go wrong painting garden walls with these oil pastels.  Oh, and that thin branch sweeping across from left to right brings everything together.

William Shatner

It's been a long time since my last post but I've finally got to a day with no Christmas shopping, university pickups or doctor/dentist/optician appointments and the football doesn't kick off until 7pm.  So I finally have the chance to do some painting.  Not before time too as stats show views of this website are dropping  off.  Today I thought I'd try to get back in the swing of things with the inktense pencils and a portrait of William Shatner.

First up, I got something onto paper using a grid and working upside down .  That's got to be the best way to get a likeness.  It took me a couple of attempts in places and I still don't think I got it right.  Anyway, after that I followed my usual method of colour the darkest areas first.  So I started with deep indigo, then worked through to violet, shiraz and fuchsia.  I also put a little bit of sea blue in the eyes.  I then thought I'd better get Bill's shirt the right colour, so put in some sun yellow and apple green.  I also added a little bit of this to the face.  And then I reached for leaf green, always a favourite colour, and added it in random places all over the painting, not really worrying about values or about where I could see greens.  Not that I could see greens anyway, working from a black and white photo.  And all of the colours went into the hair.

After wetting the painting and leaving it to dry, I thought the indigo neckline on Bill's shirt looked too light, so put some bark over the top, taking the opportunity to make a correction to his jawline at the same time. This worked but made the neckline too dark, if anything, so I added more bark over the darkest indigo areas, including the hair, facial creases, and bitsof the eye and mouth.

And then I stopped.  It was good to get back into swinging the brush and I like the interesting colours that I've brought out in Bill's face but the likeness isn't there and there's a lot of, well, amateurness singing out from the painting.  The eyes and mouth, despite being carefully observed and drawn, look like the sort of eyes that a kid at primary school would draw.  It's as if I've never drawn anything before using observation.  I'm clearly not back to match fitness after a long layoff.  This one can't go in the shop window.