Basford, a bit too fiddly?

I can't say I enjoyed doing either of these from Johanna Basford's Enchanted Garden book. There are so many elements in them, and each is tiny, limiting the scope for shading. But at least I completed them.

Are there Basford fans out there who would defend her style of drawing?

'Right colors', 'wrong colors'?

What I am about to say may be subjective, but I really do feel that there are 'right' colors that go together.

This one on the seahorses from my Harmony of Colour book, for instance. Each one presented opportunities to use colors together, and my choices were not random. I picked green as the predominant color for the main seahorse, and introduced a complementary color - red (opposite to green on the color wheel) and then moved a little down the color wheel to orange, and moved up a bit to allow in a blue.

The other seahorse had a palette of purples and pinks, mainly, and the incomplete seahorse to the top right-hand corner was to have been in a palette of cool blues, blue-greens and greens. The seahorse to the bottom left-hand corner was mostly earth-toned.

I also made this an exercise in light, imagining the light source coming from the right, so the shades were light and dark accordingly.

The elephant above  (from the same book) must count as one of my most disappointing pieces so far. It just looks wrong. Blue, yellow and reds with pinks and browns? It just doesn't 'go'. Another abandoned work. (Abandoned also because the drawing was too fiddly and demanding. The fine lines also presented a challenge.)

Does anyone out there agree with me on 'right' and 'wrong' colours?

Coloring in backgrounds

If you want your main subject to pop out, consider a palette of paler colors for the background. Or even a contrasting palette of colors.

This was my takeaway from doing this eagle and the following bird, both from my Harmony of Colour book:

I used browns (again!) for the eagle, which was fine,
but I should have muted the colors of the background. I
realised this too late, and didn't even bother finishing
the work on the background. Consider this
an abandoned piece...

This one worked better, with the (mythical?) bird in
strong teal and the background in pastels. This too, was an
abandoned work. I ran out of patience to color in
 the fiddly background!

My 'spirit animal', the owl

There was once an owl

Who lived in a wood,

The more he saw,

The less he spoke.

The less he spoke,

The more he heard.

Why can't we be

Like that wise old bird?

For some reason, this rhyme has stayed with me since childhood. Then a friend gave me a 10cm tall porcelain owl as a gift, which started off my collection of owls. I now have them in glass, metal, leather, paper, plastic, cane, wax, volcanic stone ... some bought during my travels, and others were gifts.

A part of the collection sits in a display case below the coffee table at home. Put together, you see all at once how different artists have rendered this one bird in their own way. No matter what they are made of, it's their eyes, always the eyes, that grab your attention first.

It was Rachael who first referred to the bird as my 'spirit animal', so the headline is from her. I was, naturally, drawn to the owls in my Harmony of Colour book, so here are two of them.

I kept to shades of brown for this owl, and let
 the colours rip with its dream-catcher.  

Once again, a study in browns. I really should
open my mind to other colors instead of keeping it so real. 

Fur revisited ...still more work needed

I picked out this fox from my Johanna Basford book to color, and set out to go beyond just adding color to going for texture. Fur redux.

Again, it has all the signs of insufficient work on it, especially near the tip of the tail. More layers of color needed.

The nerd in me actually looked up photographs of red foxes online, and found out that the lower halves of their legs are actually black. I wonder why now I was striving for such accuracy when this particular fox has leaves unaccountably sticking to its body! Haha. See how the global community of pencil colorists have rendered this fox psychedelic here.

Fur aside, I was playing with colors here. I wanted to stick to an autumnal palette for the leaves, leaves past their prime.

Drawing Tasha

I sketched Tasha from a photograph in pencil first, and chiding myself for trying to run before I had learned how to walk, next looked up the Internet for how to draw fur! There are YouTube videos aplenty, and other websites -  this one, for example - which show the amount of work needed for it to look real.

One tip is that your color pencils have to be very sharp. I didn't always adhere to that for this drawing.

I was actually quite pleased when I finished, but now, looking at it months later, I think it's an obviously unfinished piece of work. Some bits, like Tasha's back, could do with several more dashes of color, either darker or lighter strands, so the fur has more depth in color and texture and doesn't look like someone (namely, me!) just had one go at it and then lost interest. (In the link above, the artist went over each section of fur four times, adding an array of shades.)

The websites that I consulted also raised my awareness of how fur lies one way or other, and how this can be achieved by varying the direction of the strokes.

Tasha is actually whiter than this. But I had to do her in more beige-y shades since the paper in my sketch book is rather white.

The litmus test came when I showed this drawing to my sister Anne, Tasha's owner. She said it was a very good likeness of her spoiled moggie.

The husband posted the picture on his Facebook page and garnered nearly 50 likes from his friends, some of whom said they didn't know I had this in me.

But I know I have to work at this more. I hope to be drawing more animals in the coming months.

Translucency (Part 2) - in a marble

I took a free, online lesson from professional artist Thaneeya McArdle on how to draw a photorealistic marble. This was the result:

 

It doesn't look as good as Thaneeya's, of course. And it looks a lot better when viewed from afar!

But drawing this taught me something: Glass is "colorless" to the observer, but in order to render it looking that way, there has to be some color, because the glass reflects surrounding objects (such as the table it sits on, or other nearby objects). So if you really look, glass is not colorless at all when you get down to depicting it in color pencil (or any other medium).

The colors used here for the glass ranged from white to pale sage and powder blue and various shades of grey, aside from the bold red and blue stripes within the marble itself.

Color pencil art (and indeed, all art) requires you to leave behind what you perceive when you "see". You could, for example, "see" a clear-glass bottle of white wine. But you can also see the vertical swathes of bright white on the bottle, lying right next to swathes of very deep greys or whatever reflected color the glass has picked up; and these contrasting colors are right next to each other, with pin-sharp borders, no intermediate shades in between. It's this high contrast that contributes to the shine in glass and metal. Even each "clear" droplet of condensation on glass isn't truly colorless.

Another takeaway from this is that you need a very steady hand - see my somewhat shaky dark grey outline at the top of the marble! - and very sharp pencils, in order that the white bits of reflection are sharply defined.

A look at my collection of Pinterest pictures, showing Mason jars filled with marbles, or "sweating" glasses of cold drinks (complete with ice cubes) really tells me that, in this business, I have miles to go before I sleep.

Doing this marble was my first step in coming away from coloring books and venturing into drawing and coloring in my own pictures. Ambitious? Yes. Do I have enough time to indulge in this right now? Not really!

Having to go to work gets in the way of everything. Every damned day.

Translucent bug wings

I was quite pleased with the way I did this bug's wings. I had decided that coloring in this one would be an exercise in achieving the translucent effect, so I used a pencil and lightly drew in the centre of the flower on the wings, and used the same colour palette as with the rest of the centre of the flower.

I took care not to press the yellow and oranges too hard, or it would flatten what is called the "tooth" of the paper, rendering it incapable of taking in any more color. This way, I was able to overlay the yellow and orange with pale sage and powder blue (Prismacolor's pale green and pale blue respectively) that I used on the bug's wings so they look "see-through".

I check out online tutorials on color pencil art (see list of favourite links to the right of this blog page) and maintain Pinterest boards of my and other people's work so I can learn. And learning has been fun.

My coloring books reviewed

"Just Add Color" series: Folk Art (S$16.05)  

This book has about 30 drawings rendered by Lisa Congdon in naive art style.  The subjects are simple, mostly drawn from nature or are abstract. They range from a basket of fruit to birds in trees to human figures dressed in a style that reminds me of the Amish.

The paper is smooth, super white, and the areas to be filled in with color are large enough for the artist to attempt blending colors, or playing with shades.

The strong point here is that the pages are perforated on the edges, which means if you are pleased with the result of your work, tearing it out safely for framing is easy.

"Harmony of Colour" series: Wildlife & Nature (A$12.95) 

This book, which the husband bought for me from a bookshop between Hunter Valley and Sydney last September, while we were on holiday,  has 33 drawings, beautifully detailed. The fourth book in the series, it has a chittering community in a Facebook page. It contains a lot more black areas in each drawing than the other two books. The paper is much thinner than the other two as well.

The annoying thing is that the drawings go right to the inside edge of the book, so getting to the extreme left hand edge is a challenge. If you want to frame any of these up, you'll just have to go at it with a sharp pen knife and hope for the best.

The Harmony of Colour people say in the preface: "Be aware of the overall harmony of your coloring, rather than focusing on each element individually. Try to balance the colors so that they are a reflection of your emotions of the moment. If the colors on your page are in harmony, then your mind will follow!"

Er. I'm in two minds about that. Yes, I do believe in trying to achieve a color palette that is "harmonious", but at the same time, I notice that several of these drawings enter the realm of fantasy. After all, what crazy whale has floral patterns all over its skin? What owl wears a dream catcher?  What eagle looks just trippy, set as it is against a manic swirl of busy background patterns? To me, these fantasy drawings are throwing an invitation to me to play with a riot of colors, yes, even clashing ones. The owl doesn't have to be brown, though I colored mine in restrained shades of earth tones in an exercise to get to know the browns among my pencils.

That said, these drawings gave me quite a bit of practice in choosing and blending colors.

Johanna Basford,  Enchanted Forest (9.95 British pounds) 

OK. I haven't got her best selling Secret Garden, but a look through this book gives an idea of her drawing style - very detailed, very painstaking.  

Don't embark on this unless you are prepared to take a number of sessions to finish each. Basford offers you five kajillion leaves on her trees and plants to fill in with color, a real test of anyone's patience. And each leaf is tiny, which limits the amount of shading and blending you can do. Basford is perhaps best for those who are less ambitious about achieving gradations of colour, or playing on light and textures. Just looking to do straight coloring and are patient by nature? This will do fine.

This Enchanted Forest one features "symbols" - such as a treasure chest, small animals or birds - tucked away among the trees and plant life and woodland animals, with which one can "unlock" the secret object that the castle at the back of the book is "hiding". Frankly, I can't be bothered with the "mystery". I just want to color!

All in, I would say the Harmony of Colour book is my favourite.

150 Prismacolor pencils! 72 Derwent pencils!

My dear husband, seeing my new interest, quietly went to Amazon and ordered me a set of Prismacolor pencils - their biggest set, at 150 pencils. That's the set pictured with the title of this blog.  Not that he had known what brand to get me. He just told Dr Google he wanted "the best" color pencils. 

I was floored when they arrived. They are excellent. Rich, vibrant color and beautifully blendable too.

The softness of the Prismacolor layers beautifully, and 
when I used my (Derwent) blender pencil, this was the 
ombre effect I got on this elephant from one of my 
three coloring books. So much depth.
Ditto the fish below. 

Both the fish and elephant pictures are from my Harmony 
of Colour book. See blog entry above this one for 
reviews of the three coloring books I have.  

This Prismacolor set was why I was able to give away my Faber Castells (see previous post) to my friend. I had bought those in the late 80s, when I was casting around for something to do outside my work in the government service, and did actually get down to drawing and coloring in my own art then - flowers, parrots...

Six months after I got the Prismacolor set, Christmas came around.  I got another box of pencils among my gifts, this time, Derwent, the box of 72, from my sister, who had done her research and shopped at Art Friend, one of our premier art supplies stores here. It is Derwent's largest box available in Singapore. She also got me a souped up pencil sharpener, also Derwent.

Among my Christmas presents was Johanna Basford's Enchanted Forest, her sophomore book after the world-record-breaking Secret Garden.  

 I am so spoiled.

A color pencil evangelist

I have so far have won over one convert. OK, "evangelist" might be overstating it a tad. I don't bring up the topic unless I know the person might be receptive.

I was talking to a friend who has semi-retired, but keeps herself busy tutoring teenagers in their school subjects; she also has her church work and household chores to juggle. Her children are grown-up, pursuing their own careers. At one point last year, she was hit by the blues when she realised her life was changing from how she had known it to be.

Over coffee, I told her about my new hobby and suggested that she take it up. Her first reaction was: "Oh, unlike you, I was never good in art in school. The art teacher kept yelling at me: 'Tones! Tones! I want to see tones! Light and shadow!'"

I told her that the horrible Mrs Beetsma wasn't around anymore to stand in judgment, and that she was free to color pictures in as she pleased. I bought this dear friend a coloring book, and gifted her my slightly used 24 Faber Castells and a set of 12 water color pencils, Faber Castell's Aquarelles - the kind that give water color effects if you add a wet paintbrush to the areas colored. 

Over the next week, she was sending me pictures of her finished work, pleased that coloring them in was giving her a new focus. She also said she was finding the activity strangely relaxing.  I hope she continues enjoying this.

How it began for me

When I let on that I had picked up an adult coloring book, there were sniggers aplenty. "Don't forget to color inside the lines," said someone.

Was that a dare? Well, I'll do more than that. I'll show them. They have no idea that professional artists have been using color pencils for ages, with some of them turning out works that look almost photographic. Have you seen drawings of glass bottles? Of clothing where the folds look so real you can reach out to feel the texture, be it nubby like wool or soft and drapey like silk?

No, we aren't talking about big, flat splashes of color, some outside the lines - the way kids do it.

The trend is now huge globally and with names such as Johanna Basford and Millie Marotta now famous, and one can't walk into a bookshop without seeing displays with 40 titles for adult coloring books alone, with the accoutrements thoughtfully stocked nearby - erasers, pencil sharpeners and... good grief, even CDs with music for you to play while you do your thing.

It's a new pastime undertaken mostly by women, and I have read of clubs springing up, gathering women to color in pages of the fine drawings by the likes of Basford and Marotta; new titles are coming up all the time, including pop-culture-themed ones like those on Benedict Cumberbatch (ew) and Harry Potter.  

Back in time,  a little before the craze took off, I was in a good bookshop, about to pay for some purchases when a book in the "Just Add Color" series and titled Folk Art caught my eye.  On a whim, I bought it, went home and dusted off my old set of 24 Faber Castells and just got started...

My first piece from the Folk Art book, and my first
 time handling my Faber Castell color pencils 
in about 25 years.  

My next one, still using my Faber Castells. 

A few months later, newspapers were writing about the craze, and pop psychologists were falling over themselves to explain why people were "regressing" to something they did when they were five.

All I know is I enjoy doing it, and the satisfaction of having a pretty picture at the end of it. I don't think this is a passing fancy for me personally, and I have set my sights on graduating to drawing and then coloring in my own work.