These are stunning. I love seeing how captivated you are! I don’t think you are, but don’t use any graphite beyond the initial rough drawing phase. Graphite smears easily when blended with colour pencils. We just use it for or light initial drawing or “map” to follow. We go in with a very sharp polychromos for details. We keep a clean sheet of paper between our hand and our drawing paper so as to not smudge the drawing with our hand. Just practice building up the colours lightly. You’ll develop the know how of when to press harder – when you need to saturate colours. Enjoy!
@sam-mcwilliams Aha… that explains it. Very helpful, thank you again! I was using graphite for some of these as I seem to be able to get a sharper point and finer lines… but perhaps I need to be more patient with the polychromos pencils and learn to use them better. The three on the right are all graphite… with a tiny bit of polychromos on top, but the two on the left are polychromos and see how much more blurry they are?
These are wonderful Peta!!!! One thing that helps a lot to make the edges crisp when you use polychrome pencils is to use a Verithin pencil at the end. If you trace around the perimeter of the subject it seals the edge and helps prevent smudging, etc. Verithin pencils are made by Prismacolor and are a hard wax pencil. They come in a whole range of colors so you can use corresponding colors to use on a variety of subjects even on the same page. They also work great in other applications. The greys work great for cast shadows!
@doug-milne Thank you very much, I’ll look them up. I agree that it would make a nice difference to have a fine line on the edges… good idea. This has been a fabulous week of drawing with a steep learning curve. I appreciate all your help and feedback. I’ve framed this one as it feels like my first ‘real drawing’ and I find such joy in this process. 🙂
I am so glad you framed it Peta! When I first saw this piece I thought it should be framed! I love black/white and tonal artwork! Love that the arc bars are included!!!!
I’m having some problems with the colours smudging up my detail work… If you have any tips I’d love to hear them please.
These are stunning. I love seeing how captivated you are! I don’t think you are, but don’t use any graphite beyond the initial rough drawing phase. Graphite smears easily when blended with colour pencils. We just use it for or light initial drawing or “map” to follow. We go in with a very sharp polychromos for details. We keep a clean sheet of paper between our hand and our drawing paper so as to not smudge the drawing with our hand. Just practice building up the colours lightly. You’ll develop the know how of when to press harder – when you need to saturate colours. Enjoy!
@sam-mcwilliams Aha… that explains it. Very helpful, thank you again! I was using graphite for some of these as I seem to be able to get a sharper point and finer lines… but perhaps I need to be more patient with the polychromos pencils and learn to use them better. The three on the right are all graphite… with a tiny bit of polychromos on top, but the two on the left are polychromos and see how much more blurry they are?
These are wonderful Peta!!!! One thing that helps a lot to make the edges crisp when you use polychrome pencils is to use a Verithin pencil at the end. If you trace around the perimeter of the subject it seals the edge and helps prevent smudging, etc. Verithin pencils are made by Prismacolor and are a hard wax pencil. They come in a whole range of colors so you can use corresponding colors to use on a variety of subjects even on the same page. They also work great in other applications. The greys work great for cast shadows!
I am so glad you framed it Peta! When I first saw this piece I thought it should be framed! I love black/white and tonal artwork! Love that the arc bars are included!!!!
This looks wonderful framed!!
Yes – so very wonderful framed – excellent framing job – I love it.