The stencil allowed for great powdered pencil work – wet (with Gamsol) or dry, applied with a cotton ball, it made gorgeous soft blends. A little bit of sketchy lines, and the trees came out lovely!
I tried a couple techniques with pencils – and while I probably made my trees too thin, the texture and color blending just wasn’t as elegant as the stencil! It also took longer to make a smaller group of trees this way than with the stencil.
I’m pretty comfortable conceding, but I know some will vote for me out of pity. And I love you. Ha! What other things would you like to see me try to replicate without the crafty tool?
Supplies
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I’ve seen a lot of sketch artists (not sketchy artists, they’re legit talents, ha!) who’ve been using a really weirdly sharpened pencil; at first I thought they were the purists using knives to sharpen….I remember a friend in art school who insisted on that! But then I went to one artist’s profile link where they liisted supplies -and this crazy sharpener was there. And you know me….I had to give it a try. If that many people were using it, maybe they know something I don’t!
Video
As always, I give my tests a real-world spin, and in this case, I decided to color on vellum. I’d been wanting to try it anyhow, so this seemed a good project to test!
Surprisingly, the pencils didn’t instantly break on me! I was using heavy pressure too – just to push the pencils and put the points to the test. I felt comfortable enough after ‘sacrificing’ my first few pencils to go add a few more to the family of long-pointed Polychromos! I’ll have to run more tests with other brands.
I did use a brush with the Gamsol here – with a brush! On the vellum, it moved the color a little TOO easily since it was so wet and the vellum is a bit slick. Here’s the Tiny Tutorial about blending supplies that I talked about. (I post them on Instagram every Thursday if you like that kind of thiing! Find the old ones in the “highlight” (one of the yellow icons) on my instagram page.)
Coloring on vellum is a different beast – be careful not to brush your hand over the color or it’ll definitely move; I’m not sure there’s enough fixative out there to secure it. But – since vellum is semitransparent, you can put the pencil side facing downward! The red flowers then truly POP when colored on the front, too.
For the sentiment, I just stamped it on a square and tied a bow over the top to make it seem like a tag without having to thread it through anything. And the fact that this card has red and green on it – it’ll be a great card to send during my heavy mailing season: thanksgiving and holiday cards sent to all my patrons! I now have *one* done. *gasp* I need to get busy! ha.
Supplies
Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. If you choose to shop using my EH (Ellen Hutson) links, please accept cookies on that site in order to retain the link to my blog, or that compensation does not happen for me. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art
In which I assess what you can do with just this set of 20 pencils! There are two videos, the big one on my YT channel, the other on the MFT channel, but both are included below.
This set – the “Portrait Assortment” – actually came out at least a year and a half ago…and have been in the studio for over a year. AGH! You have no idea the backup of projects sitting around here staring at me. This one, since it included the update of a hex chart, was even more intimidating than most, and I kept putting it off. It feels sooo good to finally be able to share it after over a month of work!
My biggest question about this set, after seeing the colors in it – would this actually work for portraits, alone? Are there colors missing, or colors not used? I found both, but since I’m not a portrait artist, and am kinda clueless about the approach others would take, I could well be wrong. But I gave it a shot!
I swatch colors on 1-1/2″ squares to put into my swatchbooks (I got my pages here)…..
I know a lot of people will think I *am* a portrait artist by this – but I’ve not spent a lifetime studying portraits and learning how to handle skintones etc. So this was just an attempt – and it honestly doesn’t look a lot like the reference! That’s always been my problem; I can make people look human, but not like the subject.
Card video
I knew my crafters would like to see a card with the set too, so I came through for you! Rather than one super long video on my channel, the card is over at MFT today. I used two stamp sets, changing the outfit on one so she’s wearing a costume I once wore! Click here to see it.
Hex chart update
If you purchased the Luminance Hex Chartat art-classes, then your account should (ha!) have the download updated in your downloads list. To see if it’s the right one, the new one would say “Rev 2021” just below the copyright creation date.
If you purchased the Luminance Hex Chart here on this blog – and haven’t already worked with me to have that added to your art-classes account – then you can drop me an email and I’ll take care of that for you. Be sure to let m know what email account you would have purchased it under so I can find it to move it over.
Supplies
Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. If you choose to shop using my EH (Ellen Hutson) links, please accept cookies on that site in order to retain the link to my blog, or that compensation does not happen for me. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art
Today….a little something full of color! Last week I created one of my “tiny tutorials” in which I used this drawing for the graphic. I’d been so inundated with watercolor throughout July that it felt SO GOOD to get pencils back out again. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?
The sketch is done in my Stonehenge sketchbook – my favorite paper for colored pencils – and colored with my Prismacolor pencils. The tiny tutorial was the result of having found some trends within trends in research lately and I decided to use some of those colors to play with in the drawing. There’s also a card today so keep scrollin’!
Each Thursday I share a “tiny tutorial” – a mini slideshow where I teach a tiny concept in a graphical way. This past week was this one….I wasn’t able to make it a little slideshow but you can go see it right here.
The card
Ellen Hutson has the final release in the Summer of Stamping today -and I used one of the stamp sets along with a die for a card – and the same colors as the sketch.
I had some issues with this card that turn out to be actually a good little learning for me! I’ve said before that hot press watercolor paper is practically the same thing as Stonehenge. And, in some ways it is. But just LOOK at how grey it is! And it also ends up with a little different texture; for the letters I had to press really hard to get it to accept the pencil. Not sure what was up with that.
Using the big die left me figuring out what on earth to do designwise, so I decided the figures laying on their towels would be part of a gathered focal point in the corner, with the inlaid die down below. This meant I needed to make this a 5×5 card, so…it’s a biggie!
Supplies
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Today’s another Monday in the Summer of Stamping – so there’s a new little stamp set (dies if you want em!) that’s a partnership with Ellen Hutson and Pretty Pink Posh. SO summery!
When deciding whether to choose colors from my Hex Chart or swatch book comes down to what technique I plan to use:
Hex Chart was colored using blending solution – darker denser colors
Swatch book was colored with light layers of color
Since I’m using technique #2, I chose colors from that, not the hex chart.
Supplies for this project are linked at the end of this post. Compensated affiliate links may be used at no cost to you.
All the Summer of Stamping partnership products released over these 4 weeks are available only as long as they last – this is one of the sets that you don’t want to think about for long if you’re sitting on the fence. A walk through the instagram hop might help make your decision, as everyone will be using this set!
The colors used to color this picture, all with Polychromos Pencils:
The finished card has a black popped panel with a peekaboo hole for the image to show through; it’s slilghtly smaller than the circle so I used a 1-1/2″ punch I had in my stash. I rounded the bottom corners of the layer and card base – and added white pen around the circle.
It’s also refreshing to make a clean and simple card coz….that’s out of the norm for me!
Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. If you choose to shop using my EH (Ellen Hutson) links, please accept cookies on that site in order to retain the link to my blog, or that compensation does not happen for me. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art
I wanted to challenge myself to use some colors I might normally not use – so I picked names with island terms in them. Crazy huh? While this wasn’t my most spectacular color combo, it felt good to get out of my comfort zone and do something a little on the silly side in my color choices.
Do you call your pencils by their names? Or like I do, do you just use the numbers? I find the numbers easier to read at the least. ha! #oldeyes
Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. If you choose to shop using my EH (Ellen Hutson) links, please accept cookies on that site in order to retain the link to my blog, or that compensation does not happen for me. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art
