Monday, April 20, 2009

Alternating Medium

I recently completed and delivered a colored pencil portrait, and I am working on another now. Much of what I learned from working in colored pencil has proven very useful in learning pastel and oil, and now I am finding that the opposite is also true. Working in pastel has been eye-opening in terms of creating subtle gradation of color, something that I am now paying more attention to in my colored pencil work. Oil allows me to work in a way most intuitive to me; starting with large shapes and blocks of color, and working in details, contrast, and highlights as I go along. This is also something that I would like to try to incorporate more into my colored pencil work as well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have found the same things to be true from my beginning efforts in acrylics. The layering techniques I commonly use with pencils are similar when painting. I've had to think about the process a little harder when I paint because of my lack of familiarity with the medium. As a result I'm now much more aware of what's going into a colored pencil piece. Teaching workshops has had an impact in the same way. Having to put into words what you usually do by instinct or from experience makes you much more aware of why you do things a certain way.