Art Class w/ Wendy - Pen & Coloured Pencil vs. Watercolour Pencil & Pastel

In this class we worked with colour pencils but most of my time was spent drawing the butterfly...should have traced it. Indelible ink pen was used for the dark bits and the colour pencils for the rest. I couldn't get the colours dark enough so this was one of my least favourite assignments... but it did give me ideas.

At home, I had a play with A2 watercolour paper, my watercolour pencils and a few oil pastels. Watercolour pencils, for me are nicer than colour pencils. With watercolour pencils you can wet the drawing and get all kinds of cool effects. Pastels were used to add more layers to the drawings; it was nice because those marks weren't affected when wet. I liked the overall effect much better and probably won’t be using colour pencils in the near future.

The watercolour pencils and oil pastels are a lot of fun and I’m going to try and use them more.

Two Great Drawing Books

Wendy recommended two drawing books ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ by Betty Edwards and ‘The Fundamentals of Drawing a Complete Professional Course for Artists’ by Barrington Barber.

‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ is for people who are timid about drawing and explains how adults who are not artists tend to draw. There are plenty of amazing experiments that are worth trying; I recommend reading it. The exercise on drawing upside down and not thinking was cool; as was the contour drawing.

Drawing on the picture plane is also a great lesson and fun to do.

‘The Fundamentals of Drawing’ is the type of book that you can use as a reference guide; it has exercises on lines and circles, 3d shapes,ellipses, basic objects, methods of shading, human figure: proportions and more.

Both books are worth owning, but my lazy self needs the structure of a class to force me to practice. Also, it's nice to have the critique of an instructor and to be around like minded people.