Start of an Experiment
This project was a bit of an experiment for me. Normally I use Bristol board paper for the majority of my works, but I saw on WetCanvas! that colored pencil artists have been using Ampersand Pastel Board for their works which turn out some fantastic results. I did not have a pastel board in my inventory, but I did have a 5x7 Ampersand Gesso Board, so I tried that.
This piece is also the first in a while that I have done without the additional use of pastels, markers or pen…yep...strictly Prismacolor Pencil all the way through.
I started first with making a sketch off of my reference photo on a separate piece of paper and then tracing it over to the board with tracing paper. As you can see in the picture, I smudged some of the graphite while trying to clean up the lines. Trying to erase it made it worse so I decided not to try that again. Luckily I was pretty certain at the time that I wasn’t going to leave the background white so I could cover it with color in later steps.
Layers
The gesso board has a bit of a texture to it (probably more toothy than the pastel board would have been if I had one) so I had to build up more layers of colored pencil than I normally would. I started first by lightly blocking in all of the colors just to get a feel for the texture. Afterwards I was fighting the urge to outline the macaws and the branch with pen since the initial layer of colors started hiding the pencil outlines. I resisted though.
I built up more layers of color on the birds on the progress shot below. During this stage some of the layers were getting thicker and I noticed that sometimes the act of trying to go over the layer again started pushing aside previous layers. This worked well for adding in highlights, but was a bit of an annoyance when a lightening effect wasn’t my goal. More layering helped combat this issue.
I blocked in the remaining sections of blue on the two macaws with true blue and went over it again with a heavier layer of powder blue to give me an undercoat of color to work with. The roughness of the board forced me to press down pretty hard on the powder blue layer to cover the majority of the white spots so the waxy results of too much prismacolor pencil in one spot was already starting to show, but there was still enough tooth left for adding in feather detail.
Next I added in a layer of electric blue over the powder blue to darken it up a bit and used the other blues from my previous list to start adding in the feather details. The primary feathers and some of the shadows have some violet blue added in as well.
I finished adding the details to the birds and branch before adding several layers of greens down for the background. Here is the final shot.
List of Colors
Here is a full list of colors that were used in this piece. All of the colored pencils I am using are prismacolor pencils. Unfortunately I don’t have much of a method to my madness so I couldn’t really say how I color. One of my goals for recording my art during the WIP stages is so that I can start to nail down some of my methods.
Background is a light layer of aquamarine with some spots of muted turquoise. It was then layered with dark green, peacock green, grass green, true green, indigo blue, and blended with a brush.
Yellow parts are a canary yellow with goldenrod and yellow ochre shadows and cream highlights. I believe there are some areas of spanish orange too.
The macaws’ beaks are muted turquoise and cool gray 90%.
The black feathers under their chins are indigo blue, dark green, and some cool gray 90%
Their faces are cool gray 90% and the white part is the exposed board.
The green parts of their heads are a mix of spring green, true green, dark green and olive green. (Possibly with some hint of a blue color too, I cannot remember.)
The blues of the macaws are done with a mix of true blue, powder blue, electric blue, cerulean blue, an unmarked blue that looks like a lighter version of true blue (303 is the number, but the name isn’t showing), an unmarked blue that is slightly lighter than indigo blue (306), and indigo blue.
Background is a light layer of aquamarine with some spots of muted turquoise. It was then layered with dark green, peacock green, grass green, true green, indigo blue, and blended with a brush.
Yellow parts are a canary yellow with goldenrod and yellow ochre shadows and cream highlights. I believe there are some areas of spanish orange too.
The macaws’ beaks are muted turquoise and cool gray 90%.
The black feathers under their chins are indigo blue, dark green, and some cool gray 90%
Their faces are cool gray 90% and the white part is the exposed board.
The green parts of their heads are a mix of spring green, true green, dark green and olive green. (Possibly with some hint of a blue color too, I cannot remember.)
The blues of the macaws are done with a mix of true blue, powder blue, electric blue, cerulean blue, an unmarked blue that looks like a lighter version of true blue (303 is the number, but the name isn’t showing), an unmarked blue that is slightly lighter than indigo blue (306), and indigo blue.
The branch was done with putty beige, sienna brown, sienna beige, colorless blender.
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