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| 3/12/14 Koh-I-Noor Tri-Tone colored pencils, Stillman & Birn Alpha sketchbook |
This sketch was done from a photo of myself at the only time
in my life that my hair was shorter than it is now.
I’m experimenting with Koh-I-Noor Tri-Tone colored pencils – three colors together in one lead – which I
first learned about from Roz Stendahl’s blog. The queen of experimentation, Roz has done gazillions of remarkable
drawings in just about every medium in existence. I got the pencils several
months ago, thinking they would be interesting to try at life drawing sessions,
then promptly forgot about them. As often happens, I was digging around for
something else when I found the Tri-Tone pencils.
Before I forgot about them again, I quickly pulled up an old
black-and-white photo, circa 1959, that unfortunately is very washed out and
has little contrast or tone. I used the same tactic I tried at last week’s life drawing session: Instead
of drawing a contour line first, I shaded in dark areas with the side of the pencil,
then used the point later to shape details afterwards. I used the “Rainforest”
pencil first, in tones of green. Since the dress is so white and washed out, I decided
to darken up the background using the complementary “Sunset” pencil, which has
tones of red and yellow.
The pencils are fun. Like sketching with brightly colored gel
pens, which helped me see that emulating realistic colors is over-rated, using Tri-Tone pencils keeps me focused on tone and
value instead of hue (which is hard to speculate when sketching from a black-and-white
photo anyway). I’m definitely taking them to life drawing – and maybe I’ll even
take them out in the field for urban sketching, too.
Good idea for focusing on tone and value instead of hue. I know at one time the local arts & craft store here sold "funny pencils" that had several colors in the lead of the pencil. I wonder if they are the same. Nice baby photo sketch.
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