Tuesday, March 01, 2011

10 reasons to sketch with coloured pencils

Today, the Derwent Pencil Company has published my article - 10 reasons to Sketch with Coloured Pencils by Katherine Tyrrell - on their lovepencils blog.

Published on the lovepencils blog 1st March 2011

I've now been sketching with coloured pencils for over twenty years - following a tip from a professional artist about how easy and effective they were to use for sketching.  I'm so convinced of their value I have no doubt I'll be sketching with them for the next twenty years too!

However I've always been really surprised that coloured pencils don't get mentioned more in art journals as a valuable sketching medium - for all the reasons I outline in the article.

As you can imagine I was absolutely delighted to be able to give coloured pencils a higher profile by focusing on value as an article for the blog!  Here are the 10 reasons - and if you want to know more you'll have to read the article!
  1. Not a lot to carry!
  2. As many colours as you want
  3. Go where other artists cannot go
  4. Scope for mixed media
  5. Get a true record of colours and tones 
  6. Work small - and large
  7. Impervious to rain
  8. If you make a mistake....
  9. Coloured pencils don’t run 
  10. No waiting for the paint to dry! 
I'll be putting a FREE downloadable copy of the article - in a slightly different format - on the Making A Mark Guides page of my website blog later this week. 

If you've not tried coloured pencils as a sketching medium why not give them a go!

The Love Pencils blog

The lovepencils blog was started in November last year by Derwent - the Cumberland Pencil Company
It was great to see a major pencils manufacturer grasp the value that a blog can have for those who are fans of their products and the company itself. 

The Derwent ladies make a point (joke!) of posting on a regular basis.  You can see the archive of past posts here.  Plus the blog has now passed the magical three month mark - which means it's "a stayer"! (It's a fact that something like 90% of blogs die before they are three months old).

I love all the people at Derwent - they're always really helpful and I'm certainly more than happy to contribute an article to this great new blog.  :)

If you're a fan of working with pencils I do recommend subscribing to the LovePencils blog.  Apart from keeping you up to date with new products and product changes, the blog also has articles by artists working with pencils in different ways.

7 comments:

  1. well, that was an informitave well written article, not that I am suprised, excellent as usual. Getting quite famous now!?!

    ReplyDelete
  2. So looking forward to your colored pencil update, Katherine...this was a terrific article.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello Katherine,
    I'm so delighted to have found your blogs during the last week, and just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying them, and your art, which is wonderful. Your posts are incredibly helpful, informative and inspiring. I'm just about to start an OCA drawing course, and your posts have been invaluable in encouraging me to get out and about sketching again.
    With best wishes
    Jules

    ReplyDelete
  4. I recently found your blog... Great work!! Thanks for reminding me about my colored pencils. I have picked them up again. Thanks for the informative material too!

    ReplyDelete
  5. colored pencils are the best way of making an sketch, good article :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Great article!!! Nice to see your name appearing in the paper too.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Great article.. I think the color pencil is very much ignored when it comes to sketching on location. This is an eye opener of an article

    ReplyDelete

PLEASE NOTE:
I always check identities and ALL links in comments for spam.

Due to excessive attempts to introduce spam via comments on this blog, I've introduced a regime where all comments with links in the ID or text to the websites of hotels/resorts/tourist destinations will NOT be approved and are deleted. The websites of repeat spammers are also reported to Google.

Nice, sensible people who are not new to blogging probably don't need to read my Comments Policy