Tag / colour pencil

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

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.