A weekend at Missenden Abbey

This weekend, My sister-in-law, Shirley, and I went to Missenden to do an art class "Drawing Fruit and Vegetables in Coloured Pencils".  We had a wonderful time.  Roger Reynolds is a botanical artist who uses Castell Beyer pencils, which I had never used before.  Neither have I ever been taught how to use coloured pencils.  Castell Beyer are watercolour pencils - soluble in water - but we did not use any water, although we were shown how to blend them with Zest-it, which is a solvent.  I did not use this technique.

The first session showed us how to layer colour.  I expected to have to layer colour, but did not realise it is easier to layer from the shadows up to the highlights.  Also Roger explained how to deal with the "daffodil problem".  Daffodils have a lot of shadow and there is a technique how to get subtle shadows in very light toned colour.  To blend shadows on a yellow flower, ie shades of grey in yellow, you use the exact opposite colour.  I knew how to do this with paint and dye, by using a tiny spot of the opposite colour to tone down the brilliance. In coloured pencil, you use the pale lilac pencil to shade yellow, because you have the equivalent tonal value purple to the yellow.  I had often wondered why anyone would use a pale lilac pencil, as it is the colour I never use.  But if you just want to knock back the brilliance of a yellow pencil, use a bit of lilac underneath.  Like most techniques, it is obvious, once you understand the principle.

We spent the weekend drawing pointsettia plants.  Botanical drawing takes a long time.  Everyone else worked at about life size - the plants were about 3" tall - but I instantly enlarged them so my drawing fitted the page, with leaves touching the edges of the paper.  I learned a lot about blending coloured pencils and although my drawing was not as detailed as everyone else's, I was very pleased with my progress.  I can see me using this technique for subsquent digital print, and my purpose is not to draw in a photo-realistic style, but to get fairly good representation that shows it remains a pencil drawing.  If you want a photograph, take a photograph.  I want my imagery to look like it is hand drawn, without being stylised.

I did not complete my image, but it is good enough to put in my pomegranate sketchbook, as it reminds me a lot about the different skills I used to create the image. These included sketching the initial outline in HB pencil; regularly dusting the pencil crumbs off the page with a soft brush; using a really, really sharp pencil; press fairly hard; observe in detail; analyse colour by identifying the main overtone, then work out the shadow by using the opposite colour on the colour wheel.

A productive weekend.