Hello! Welcome to my first-ever blog!
For the first time in my life on Jan. 14th, I learned how to color.
Yes, you read that correctly. As a young woman in her early twenties, I finally had the opportunity to learn coloring techniques to enhance my drawing abilities. I also used Prismacolor colored pencils for the first time -- a purchase I do not regret. The colors come out quite smooth for the Prismacolor as opposed to my usual Crayola colored pencils.
I first completed value scales with a 2B graphite pencil. I was quite pleased with the results of my hatching, cross-hatching, and curvilinear lines. I loved how 2B graphite was able to get very light and dark tones.
(2B value scales)
The next value scales I made were with a 2H graphite pencil, which came out significantly lighter than the 2B. However, I think the lighter and darker tones blended better than with the 2B, although the darkest value was quite light.
(2H value scales)
My next value scales were with the 4B graphite pencil, which blended very nicely, in my opinion. I was able to get a good contrast of the dark shade against the lighter shades using this pencil. I believe the tonal values for curvilinear lines blended the best out of all them for this sheet.
(4B value scales)
My final experiment with the graphite pencils involved with 4H graphite pencil. These value scales came out the lightest out of all value scales I created. Using the 4H allowed me to create some great light tones, which were more difficult to achieve with the 4B.
(4H value scales)
After my journey through the world of graphite shading, it was time for me to work with my Prismacolor colored pencils. The colors I utilized in these exercises came from a 24 pack of soft core pencils. I pleasantly surprised with the results of these colored pencils -- the colors they created were absolutely beautiful!
The first exercise required me to cross-hatch with blue, green, and yellow colored pencils. I was astonished by how two colored pencils (green and blue) could create two different colors depending on the order I drew them first. For example, for the blue-green color mix, I colored in blue first and then cross-hatched the green on top. Whereas for the green-blue color mix, I did the complete reverse. Although the same two colors were used, they created two completely different color tones!
In the next exercise, I used yellow, red, and blue Prismacolor colored pencils to create various shades of colors using the technique of cross-hatching. I think the red-blue and blue-red color mixes might have looked a bit more cleaner if I had used a darker blue colored pencil instead of the sky-blue. Overall, I found that using the Prismacolor colored pencils in this activity required me to sharpen the point quite often -- more so than I would normally need to with Crayola colored pencils. Yet, the vibrant colors that Prismacolor offers outweighs its opportunity costs.
In the next few exercises, I utilized my Pilot gel pens to create value scales with various techniques including stippling, vertical lines, horizontal lines, scribble lines, and curvilinear lines. I used the colors of blue, green, and red to create various color gradients.
Overall, I prefer the colored pencils over the gel pens for creating value scales. Out of all the scales I produced with the colored pens above, I prefer the ones I completed with scribble lines, although I did make a minor mistake with my green value scale and had to continue the scale further down on the page. I was surprised; however, how the blue and green pens created a blue-green and green-blue tones that gave the illusion of a new color.
Finally, after many hours of coloring and shading, I constructed value scales using black, red, blue, and green colored gel pens in the five techniques of stippling, vertical lines, horizontal lines, scribble lines, and curvilinear lines. I think the blue and black colors blended the best together compared to the green and the red color mixes. The stippling technique was easier to employ with the gel pens than the colored pencils or graphite pencils.
In final consideration, I learned invaluable techniques for coloring in my artistic endeavors. I hope to put some of these techniques to good use when working in the field and creating my nature illustration projects this semester.
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