Drawing Notes - Materials - Coloured Pencils

Coloured pencils have the great advantages of being highly portable and inexpensive. They come in a wide variety of colours and can really make a drawing come alive. They can also be blended easily, allowing you to create an amazing range of tones, and usually have good covering power.

Try It Yourself

Take a single fruit, and draw it with coloured pencils. Use only two pencils to create three different tones – dark, middle and light. Step by Step Exercise

1. The first stage is to block in the main colours – don’t worry about creating tones at this stage.
2. Next, use violet to draw on top of the colours, recording the shapes of the shadows.
3. Create the three-dimensional look of this picture by leaving highlights at the top of the objects and applying darker shading to the bottom

Drawing Notes - Materials - Pencils

The pencil is probably the implement that most people associate with the term ‘drawing’ – and not unreasonably, as it is a clean, easily accessible implement that can be found easily anywhere.

Pencils are divided into two categories, H (hard) and B (soft), which are then further divided by number – 9B being extremely soft and 2B being fairly soft. Artists rarely have much use for H-grade pencils.

Combining Marks

Pencils are particularly useful for creating softly shaded shapes that also require line drawing on top to create detail.

Try It Yourself

Draw the outline of an egg using a B pencil. Then, using the edge of a 2B pencil, shade the egg, easing off the pressure towards the centre, where it will appear lighter.

Step by Step Exercise

1. To make the line drawing of the basic shapes of a group of objects, use the sharpened tip of a B pencil.
2. Next, add the main tones by drawing onto the shapes using the edge of a 4B pencil, working in a circular motion.
3. Complete the final pencil drawing by adding the deepest and darkest shadows with a very soft 6B pencil.