Colored Pencil with Ann Kullberg

Colored pencil is frequently the medium of choice for those wanting to switch from graphite drawings to color. Although it’s a natural transition from graphite, the artist who has only been working in black and white often has trouble with knowing how to build color, whether it’s with colored pencil or any other color medium. This lesson (reprinted from Ann Kullberg’s monthly magazine, From My Perspective) gives you a start on how to choose and build colors. Both of Kullberg’s books, “Colored Pencil Portraits Step by Step” and “Capturing Soft Realism in Colored Pencil” also give detailed step-by-step guidance in building rich color full of life and depth.

Seeing and Choosing Colors

1. You need to SEE a color well enough to break it down into the separate hues that make it up.

2. You need to be able to gauge value and intensity…that means how dark/light a color is…and how gray/bright a color is.

3. You need to know your palette…the actual hues available in your medium, whether it’s Prismacolor, Faber Castell…or mixtures of all colored pencil brands.

4. Last but not least…trial and error. A HUGE reason for me starting with light colors and a light touch is so I leave myself plenty of room to continue to add colors until I’m satisfied with the hue/value/intensity!

How do you do all of that? Practice, practice, practice!

Here’s an exercise to help you get a little practice. In each row there are 3 swatches that are VERY close in hue. They are identical in value and intensity to make the exercise a little easier. In the first row, one swatch is pinker…one is more yellow and one is in between. Can you identify these subtle differences? In the second row, one is more yellow (warmer), one is more blue (cooler) and one is in between. In the third row, one is bluer, one is redder and one is in between.

Practice this sort of exercise on some photos yourself. Make a value viewer (a business card sized piece of white paper with a hole punched in the middle.) Place the value viewer over a section of your photo. Now…ask yourself the first question. “What color do I see in this isolated circle?”

If the answer is “Blue” , your next set of questions may go like this:

What kind of blue? Purple blue? Greenish blue? How bright is it? (Intensity) Lots of gray? (dull, or low intensity) or very little gray? (bright or high intensity) How dark is it? How dark is it compared to the whiteness of the value viewer paper? Your choice of colored pencils will, of course depend on your answers to those questions. And if you’re me….you’ll look for the LIGHTEST colored pencils with similar hue/value/intensity as you see in your value viewer. You’ll see what I mean ( I hope!) below.

We’ll start with these khaki shorts. But first a warning. Don’t use these colors as a formula! These colors work for this photo, of these khakis in this light and reflected by these bricks!

You’ll have to use a value viewer to isolate, then choose colors for your own khakis. Also…I did this exercise on the computer…but it’s really no different than using a value viewer.

Here are swatches taken (with the eyedropper tool) from all over these shorts…moving from the highlights to the shadows. Looking at these colors as isolated colors, they’re much easier to see and dissect. The lightest might be created by a light wash of Beige (because it’s a warmish pinkish color that is both light and slightly dull) and a very light wash of Greyed Lavender, to add a touch of pinkish purple to the Beige layer.

The next color could be achieved by adding a light wash of Rosy Beige to the previous 2 layers…and possibly another touch of Greyed Lavender. Clay Rose seems perfect for the next swatch down…but also possibly a hint of 30% French Grey to tone it down (dull its intensity) some as it seems particularly dull.

The next color seems slightly pinker to me, so I may add a very, very light wash of Henna, which is a grayish pink of a fairly dark value. But Henna is not all THAT dull, so I may need a heavier coat of Clay Rose over it, to dull it back down. The last swatch would need more Henna, or Mahogany Red before adding Dark Brown and Dark Umber. If you just add browns, the result is too dull and lifeless.

So…how would I actually go about painting these shorts? First a wash of Beige and Greyed Lavender over the entire shorts, going very very lightly in the lightest areas. Next, I’d “roadmap” by filling in the very darkest shadowed areas with Rosy Beige…making sure I pay very close attention to the edges of the shadows. In other words, some of the shadow edges are sharp/crisp/clean edges. Some are soft edges that fade into the highlights. These differences in edges are so important! Where I need soft edges, I simply lighten up my pressure to 0 as I come up out of the shadow. I’d then concentrate on the shadows, building them using all the colors listed in the previous paragraph. With the shadows completed, I’d build the midtones, using Rosy Beige, Greyed Lavender, Clay Rose and French Grey as needed…always starting with the lightest color and moving gradually up in value.

See if you can isolate colors found on the white shirt. Clearly, it’s not just white and gray! If you have a graphics program…you can save this jpg, then use your eye dropper tool to find colors. Or just eyeball this image, and try to break it down into colored pencil colors.

Here are some of the colors I found in this ‘white’ shirt.

Colored pencil is frequently the medium of choice for those wanting to switch from graphite drawings to color. Although it’s a natural transition from graphite, the artist who has only been working in black and white often has trouble with knowing how to build color, whether it’s with colored pencil or any other color medium. This lesson (reprinted from Ann Kullberg’s monthly magazine, From My Perspective) gives you a start on how to choose and build colors. Both of Kullberg’s books, “Colored Pencil Portraits Step by Step” and “Capturing Soft Realism in Colored Pencil” also give detailed step-by-step guidance in building rich color full of life and depth.

Ann Kullberg invites you to visit her informative website for more colored pencil and portrait information, including beautiful colored pencil instruction kits that guide you step by step from start to finish. www.annkullberg.com