Colored Pencil Portrait Drawing of a Girl and her Cat

This is a post from Belinda Del Pesco’s Art Blog Belinda Del Pesco.

Colored Pencil Portrait Drawing of a Girl and her Cat

I’ve been experimenting a bit with colored pencil portrait drawing on various papers, and testing methods of blending.

The surprise in all the methods I tested to smooth the waxy pigments – even on toothy paper – was not the tool I expected to be the best choice – a blending pen.

I thought for sure I’d have to use one form or another of a liquid to break down the pencil’s dry pigments in order to get them to blend or to soften their edges.

Blending Colored Pencils

I’ve used colored pencil blending pens, paper pastel stomps, and brushed-on blending medium to merge layers of various temperatures and hues in colored pencils.

Who doesn’t love trying a new art supply? But after purchasing each of the manufacturer’s recommended blending options, the tool that worked the best (and easiest) was paper towels! (I use Bounty in printmaking, painting and drawing projects, because they shed less lint.)

The only caveat is that the paper under your drawing has to be sturdy. You can see my paper towel in the photo above.

I had just used it to blend blue, orange and green into the folds of the yellow butterfly dress around the neck and arm. The paper I used was not damaged after rubbing. But soft, pulpy paper will pill and roll when rubbed too much while blending the pencils.

Some of the pigment comes off the paper onto the paper towel, but plenty stays put, and merges into new colors quite nicely. My only tool then was my finger tip with the paper towel wrapped around it. Simplicity!

On this drawing, I used Strathmore drawing paper, which has a bit of tooth, and it held up beautifully against the friction of paper towel scumbling. Who knew?

Skin Tones and Colored Pencils

I find that skin tones can be challenging with colored pencils. (I’ve been using and liking Schpirerr Farben and Amazon branded colored pencils lately) It’s tempting to select one colored pencil with your best guess at skin tone, but just like with painting, there are many, many colors in skin.

I find it helps to isolate a section you’re working on and ask yourself – is this warmer or cooler in color? And then – is it redder, yellower, bluer than the skin next to it?? Is it lighter or darker? Asking that way gives a bit of Q&A structure to the blink-and-stare process of examining colors.

I usually start with a neutral color and then layer several transparent layers of color and temperature. While layering colored pencil, if one color is more potent than the other, it can completely cover the previous layers. That’s when the paper towel worked best.

The cat’s fur has brown, blue, purple, green and burgundy colors blended together in his stripes.

By buffing the uppermost colored pencil in a 2-4 layer application, I found that all four hues merged together a little more wholesomely. It took less squinting to really see the desired effect.

Colored Pencil Tools

If you’re a colored pencil aficionado, please leave a comment with your best tools. I always discover such treasures when you share details of your studio practice in the comments, and I’m grateful for that.

I don’t mean to discount other colored pencil blending options, because some of them are very cool. Have you ever tried Holbein Meltz colored pencil blender? It’s like a magic liquification tool, and well worth experimenting with. Especially on landscapes and floral drawings.

But if you’ve never tried a good old fashioned paper towel, I hope you give it a spin on your next colored pencil drawing.

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you in the next post -

Belinda

P.S In this post, you can learn about the difference between watercolor pencils and standard colored pencils.

Art Quote

Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.

But just as often, if not more often, the interruption comes not from another but from the self itself, or some other self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels and tosses itself, splashing, into the pond of meditation. And what does it have to say? That you must phone the dentist, that you are out of mustard, that your uncle Stanley’s birthday is two weeks hence. You react, of course. Then you return to your work, only to find that the imps of idea have fled back into the mist ~ Mary Oliver

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