Month: April 2011

Prismacolor Premier & Verithin Pencils

I’ve been eagerly awaiting the arrival of some art supplies all week. Today they arrived!

My new supplies

After working on a bunch of drawings recently with sharpies, I had the idea to try similar drawings with colored pencil. Unfortunately my colored pencils have been totally eaten up by my Sketchbook Project drawings. Aw, shucks. I needed new ones. 😀

I’d heard really good things about Prismacolor colored pencils, so I decided to get a set each of the Premier and the Verithin pencils. The Premiers have softer thicker lead, so the colors tend to be richer, while the Verithins’ lead is thinner and harder, so they are better for detail work.

Prismacolor!

Dick Blick had a special, so I got a free set of fine line markers with the set of 48 Premier pencils.

Of course the first thing I had to do was make a color chart.

pencil colors

The first block of colors are the Premier pencils, followed by the Verithins, and then the 4 markers. If you’d like to view the chart a little bigger, you can see it on flickr.

I was kinda surprised that there were a few colors in the set of 36 verithins that weren’t in the set of 48 premiers. I might have to pick up a couple premier pencils in pumpkin orange, dahlia purple, and deco pink–they are such nice colors!

Off I go to draw!

Sharpie Drawings

The other day I found a book on Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Signs. A small hex sign hung on the wall of my room growing up, and it was one of my most favorite things. In the book, there was even a little “how to make your own” section, which involved lots of compass drawing. Inspired, I started doodling on a piece of grid paper.

marker sketch

I drew the center part first, and added the frame because it seemed to want some structure. When using the grid to add the lines of the frame, I realized how un-geometric the circular part was. Although I like the final sketch, it felt a little unsatisfying for it to not quite line up properly, so I decided to use a compass to draw one of the basic motifs used in hex signs.

hex

I really liked the geometric feel of the frame from the first sketch and was particularly intrigued by the overlapping areas, so I had an idea to combine the compass work with an overlapping triangle texture.

round geometric

I like the result here, but the overlapping didn’t seem as clear as I wanted, so I tried a simpler style of two overlapping circles.

circles & triangles

I’m very happy with the way this one turned out. I love how the colors work together, and I achieved what I wanted in terms of overlap. I flipped the paper over to protect the surface, and I noticed the back of the paper. It’s very much the same, but the colors are a bit more subtle, and there’s a different feel to the piece.

circles & triangles back

For the next drawing, I wanted to eliminate the marker outline, and see if I could achieve a distinct edge by only filling in the parts of the grid that were within the circle.

overlapping geometry

I think it worked pretty well, especially for the edge of the circle. I’m not sure that the half-circle lines I drew within the circle are as distinct, but overall I like the colors & texture of the pattern.

overlapping geometry, back

If all goes well, I should get my shipment of colored pencils today. I have plans to continue this series with graphite & colored pencil. I think the sharpies look great, but sometimes an overlapping color would completely obscure the color behind it, so I’m thinking color pencils will be a great way to control the intensity.

Do you have a favorite image from the bunch?