Tuesday Colored Pencil Classes

These are photos of some of my morning and evening students colored pencil work. I brought in several New Guinea Impatiens plants in red, pink and white and each person chose a plant and chose a portion of the plant to focus on and draw. The morning class worked on Raspberry Canson Mi Teintes paper and the evening class worked on Violet Canson Mi Teintes because I couldn't find any more of the Raspberry color at our local art store. I chose the bright warm tones to make the flowers pop and give the finished drawing a color harmony. The warm pink and purple tones showing through the leaves give the whole drawing an interesting effect.

I thought this lesson would be interesting and fun but most everyone found it very challenging. The flowers lack different hues and values and they found it difficult to make them look real and find enough brightly colored pencils to get the job done. The leaves, buds and stems are intricate and took some thought and drawing skill. I suggested they each choose three values of green to work the leaves and later add other colors if needed. By the time everyone left I think they were tired, I even heard some comments about needing a glass of wine from the night class! I'm not sure if you can tell from the photos but they all did a wonderful job and we marveled at how we used the same subject matter and paper but each person's drawing was unique and had its own style