This is a post about my recent rediscovery of my love of pencil drawing and the results of my experiments in colored pencil. When I recently did the graphic sketch of the colorful feather I realized just how much I loved drawing and missed doing it. When my son made a comment that he had none of my art to hang on his wall I started mulling over the idea of doing a drawing for him. He has a painting of his father’s on the wall and it is of our old angel fish. Well I love angel fish and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun to do a fish also, then he would have one in each of our styles?” So that’s what I decided to do…
I started out with this peliminary sketch of the fish.
I wanted to do an angel fish but one with lots of swirly very colorful fins.
After I finished my sketch I inked the body of my fish.
Then I began my first layering of color. I have never really done any professional work with colored pencils so I watched a lot of videos on different methods for layering color, etc. I started out with my lightest colors, lay the color down and smoothed it with turpentine. It made a nice painterly effect and I really liked how well it covered this way.
I then slowly started building up the color. I found this a fascinating process. I always used only graphite when I worked in pencil when I was younger and I was missing out on a whole world of beautiful colors. The Prismacolor pencils I use are rich and soft and layer beautifully.
Once the body was done, then the colors really came out. Now I am starting to play! This was such a fun project. I really just let myself go. I found the pencils themselves made me even more creative. The vast amount of color effects I was able to achieve just encouraged me more. I think I spent more time deciding the colors and designs I would use then I did with the actual work but it was all a very fun project!
