Tag / color pencil

by Leonie Andrews

Starting to draw in January

As Yoda once said “do or do not”. So some days I do and some days I do not!

One thing I do want to do this year is work on reducing the ridiculous amount of art materials sitting unused in my back room, in cupboards and all sorts of other places around the house. Now I have materials I prefer to use, the rest just sit there.

Drawing with colour pencils, trying to change the direction of my marks each time I put the pencil on the page. Also, trying not to be too ‘precious’ with my drawings.

I’m trying some tactics to use things like markers, in particular. I have seen several artists use them to make this ‘window pane’ background to sketch over.

Marker pen window pane background, ready to use

I did a similar preparation using other hot pink markers (forgot to take a reference photo) and this is what it looks like as a base with a finished drawing over the top.

Marker background colour pencil over the top. Still life from our table top.

The fact that I’m using this lovely sketchbook from Leuchtturm 1917 helps. It was part of the ‘goody bag’ I received when I taught at the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Poznan last year. This isn’t the type of paper I would usually work with, but it’s very good for all these dry media.

One of my favourite  ‘goody bag’ items from Symposium 2025.
by Leonie Andrews

Back at the Portrait Gallery

I know it’s only been a week, but I was back at the National Portrait Gallery again on Sunday for their monthly life drawing session, called Drawn In. The Gallery provides easels, boards, materials, paper, and pencils, but you can also take your own.

My book is watercolour paper, so I did my first sketch, a tonal study, with pencil, on the smoother side of my paper.

Trying to focus more on tone, than lines, although I used both

I decided to move into the Family Art room as it’s possible to use watercolour in there. It was certainly a different angle to sketch from. It was almost the reverse of the view that I did first.

The view from the Family Art Room

Lots of friends from the Urban Sketchers were also there, so we rounded off the afternoon with cups of tea and coffee in the cafe.

by Leonie Andrews

A fistful of cafes

I have been refining my coffee sketching process this year, applying the KISS principle (‘keep it simple stupid’) to what I carry in my bag for impromptu sketching sessions. A test card of watercolours, a pencil, a pen and a waterbrush and a ‘book’ made from one sheet of A3 watercolour paper. Both the book and the colour card fit into a plastic sleeve from an old bank passbook (gosh, do you remember those?). Here’s a shot of the set up.

Each A3 sheet is folded in half horizontally to make two panorama style pages. These are folded in half then sewn together through the fold. Each side of the panorama is the folded in half again (as you can see in the photo above), which means the final size all folded up fits in the plastic sleeve.

The completed booklet

Here are sketches from my latest book. What I really like is that, depending on your layout you can sketch over part, or the full stretch of the page.

Cafe sketch, watercolour and graphite

Celebrating ‘National (read USA) Pencil Day’, the day the first pencil with attached eraser was patented in 1858

Inspired by the woman with the red hair, watercolour and graphite

Reading the papers with the rest of the retirees, pen and ink

Arborists clearing our trees from the powerlines. The left hand page of a full spread.

Shredding the prunings, the right hand page of the full spread

At the markets, pen and ink with watercolour

A final cafe sketch for the week. Watercolour and ink.

Ultimately I plan to bind these booklets together into a single book.

by Leonie Andrews

Coloured pencil time

Last year I bought a 7 colour pencil while I was travelling in Japan. I didn’t really use it until earlier this year. Of course it soon became such a favourite that I quickly used it up.

Unable to find this un-branded pencil locally I went back to using the other multi-coloured pencils in my stash. (I have previously discussed the Koh-i-Noor multicolour pencils). Here is a comparison.

Left to right are the 3 colour Koh-i-Noor Magic Pencil; the 4 colour Lyra ‘Super Ferby’ and last the remains of my 7 colour pencil next to it’s replacement. Yes! I found the ‘rainbow’ pencil online. Apart from the shape of the barrel, the original is round and the new one is a rounded triangle, there seems to be no difference between the two.

I also did a colour comparison so you can see the differences between the three.

I really enjoy using these colour pencils in my regular cafe sketches.

Here is a sketch with the 7 colour pencil. I find the intensity of these colours quite satisfying.

By comparison here is the 3 colour Koh-in-Noor in action.

The 4 and 7 colour pencils can be readily manipulated to select a preferred colour, while the 3 colour pencil is more difficult to control in terms of colour selection. Any of these pencils is worth trying in your sketches. They can also turn a simple line drawing into an interesting sketch.