Color Temperature at Volunteer Park

 

On location at Volunteer Park

In February I took an online class with Sarah Bixler on a topic that has intrigued me ever since I took two workshops with her several years ago: color temperature. In all cases, although she didn’t necessarily describe her classes as having color temperature as the focus, her personal approach to color is so strongly centered that way that it became the focus, regardless of subject matter.

I wasn’t necessarily interested in portraiture or figure drawing, but I tried to learn and understand the concepts so that I could apply them on location. Along the way, I’ve made attempts to do this on my own, but I haven’t feel confident doing it. That’s why I was thrilled when she offered several plein air workshops this summer. I couldn’t sign up fast enough!

Our subject: tree limbs turned into a jungle gym

Meeting at Volunteer Park on a thoroughly overcast afternoon, we lucked out on a comfortable temperature, but the flat lighting seemed less than ideal. Sarah pointed out, though, that while we lacked strong shadows, we had the benefit of seeing local colors more easily without the glare of direct sunlight.

The subject she chose for her demo were the remains of multiple trees that had been arranged in a sculptural-like effect (and used frequently by kids as a jungle gym). Hearing her talk through her thinking process continually as she sketched was highly informative and also gave us opportunities to interrupt with questions. Although her near-abstract approach was identical to how she approaches figures or portraits, seeing subject matter on location somehow felt more “real” and natural to me than even live studio models.

Choosing a relatively muted secondary triad (yellow-green, blue-violet, burnt ochre) that was very different from the palette she used, I sketched the same subject she had demo’d. Although I could have chosen a different subject, I thought it would be a good challenge for myself to think about the interpretations and analysis she had talked through while using my own color choices.

My sketch completed during the workshop. The blending triangle at lower left shows the palette I used. Value thumbnail at lower right.

After focusing on color temperature for my main color application, I tried something on my own: Despite keeping it somewhat abstract, I felt like the tree “sculpture” was unclear as a three-dimensional object, which I might have rendered more fully if I had been using my natural, more descriptive approach. To bring the front-facing branches forward, I added yellow to the palette and applied it sparingly to those branches as well as to the foreground grass. At the same time, I made the background cooler than it appeared to push it back. When Sarah pointed out that the background trees could be a darker value, she suggested Payne’s Grey as a neutral cool, and she was right that it made the background darker without affecting my palette choices.

Due to her approach and technique, my result is more abstract than I am used to making, so it doesn’t feel like my own (though I must say that it was a relief to focus on large shapes and not worry about drawing all those tree limbs accurately). But I’m very happy with the optical blending I achieved with dry colored pencils; I really like the “pixelated” effect on this toothy Canson XL mixed media paper I used. And I especially appreciated the opportunity to finally apply her approach to color in the field with her feedback.

Pencil notes: From my previous experience in Sarah’s classes, I knew she recommended Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. But to make the process my own as I would use it on location, I had to use watercolor pencils, even in their dry state, because my favorite Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelles (extremely soft) blend very differently than Polychromos (extremely hard). This was probably the largest (5-by-7 inches or so) sketch I’ve done with Museum Aquarelles completely dry, and it was delightful to really push their softness to cover the entire composition (which I rarely do even with small sketches). I’m thinking that Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble crayons would also lend themselves well to this technique and approach.

After scanning the image as completed in the workshop (above), I applied a tiny bit of water to the darkest areas of the background to bring the foreground object further forward (below). It was hard being so restrained with water activation, but I didn’t want to lose the optical blending effect that appeals to me so much with this approach. (See captions for more notes.)

7/9/25 Volunteer Park (After I got home, I added a very restrained amount of water only to the darkest areas of the background to further help push the focal point forward in the composition.)

Warm palette. Instead of using Sarah's recommended Polychromos pencils, I picked out pencils from the Museum Aquarelle palette to match her color suggestions as closely as possible. It's fairly close to my typical daily-carry palette.

Cool palette 

I couldn't resist snapping this pic of Sarah's disorganized, grubby and well-used pencils! I love seeing pencils that look hard-working, while my own look lazy and pristine in their tidy case (above). I can't help being tidy, but a part of me wishes I weren't.

Cold Chairs at U Village

 

4/27/25 University Village

University Village is one of USk Seattle’s tried-and-true for transitional seasons because the retail center has some sheltered areas to keep us dry. Sketchers can make themselves comfy at all the public umbrella’d tables without having to patronize venues. Except for stores and restaurants, however, U Village is all outdoors, so a cold morning is still a cold morning – made even colder because the chairs are made of metal. Yikes! Although I typically stand to sketch anyway, I sat just for a moment to keep my lettering straight, and yowza, was that chair chilly! Despite that common complaint, everyone’s enthusiasm was high last Sunday.

Trying to study color temperature again, I was in the mood for a primary triad to capture the bright colors of red umbrellas and new, green leaves on the Japanese maple trees (plus a U Village icon, Leo Sewell’s “junk” penguin sculpture).

Colder than ever from standing longer than I expected (color temperature studies always take me longer than I think they will), I took a brisk walk around the Village. Finding a spot in the direct sun (if the sun were to appear from behind clouds), I looked around and found bronze sculptures of a calf and a turtle. To add to the menagerie, I caught a living, breathing pup waiting for his human to finish snacking.

Technical note: In the first sketch, I was so focused on the challenge of color temperature combined with using a primary triad (a decision I made before realizing that the scene had so much green) that I really let the composition get away from me. The penguin was so much fun that I started drawing it first, but later I felt that it weakened the composition. Below is how I would have cropped it if I had been thinking more about composition and not about color. As usual, my pea brain can’t handle more than one concept at a time!

Plum Color Temperature Study

 

4/22/25 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Now that I’m past the excitement of pink petal peeping and sketching, I want to get back to studying color temperature. Specifically, I want to apply what I learned in Sarah Bixler’s class to sketching in the real world, on location. With all those cherry trees I sketched, I found that I was too enamored with the subject matter to focus on study, which requires a different kind of concentration. It’s actually easier to study color temperature with a “nothing” scene.

These are the same ornamental plum trees I became obsessed with several years ago as I tried to find the right color mixes to capture the reddish-purple, nearly black hue of their foliage. During that first pandemic summer, this dead-end street between Maple Leaf and Green Lake became my favorite safe and easy place to study this confounding color.

In this photo, the grassy areas look blown out and overly warm;
in reality, the fence looked warmer.

With a limited palette (yellow, red, purple, blue) and nothing tricky to draw, I could see the whole scene abstractly in the same way my classmates and I practiced color temperature concepts on portrait skin tones. The warmest spot was the fence toward the left. Other than the sky, which I decided not to color, the coolest area was the broad freeway barrier wall in the background (in reality, a dark gray; I mixed all four colors). Everything else was somewhere in between. I considered mixing a very warm green for the grass, but instead I just added a bit of yellow to the purple shadows only where the trees’ cast shadows hit the grass. I left the street shadows straight purple.



Now that it’s finally warming up a bit, I intend to do more of these studies on my walks.

Pushed Indoors Again in Columbia City

3/12/25 Empire Roasters & Records, Columbia City

Déjà vu: I recalled a USk Seattle outing in Columbia City way back in 2016 when heavy rain and wind pushed us all indoors. It wasn’t quite that bad on Wednesday, but it was definitely wet enough for our small group to retreat indoors.

Mary Jean and I decided on Empire Roasters and Records, where I had sketched with Roy and Kate just about a year ago. It’s a funky space combining a café and record store on three narrow floors. As I did last time, I admired all the furniture made from wood that still retained the raw edges, cracks and holes of the trees it came from.

I started with my current obsession: A color temperature study of the interior I faced. Using the tricks that seem to work best for me in Sarah Bixler’s class, which I had just finished, I looked for the warmest spots (the man’s face and the yellow painting on the wall) and the coolest area (his shirt). I noted that the light coming in through the window was on the cool side. From there, I just kept asking and comparing, Is this cooler or warmer than…? Eventually I want to bust out of this blue/orange (plus a little yellow) palette, but for now, it’s working for me as a learning tool. (I added the ceiling lamp at the library right before we had our throwdown.)

That done, I could relax and make a comics diary page to commend myself for unpacking my drawing table and filling my sketchbook bookcase (below).

It’s a shame that we couldn’t sketch outdoors because the Columbia City neighborhood is full of old architecture and fun business street fronts. But I was happy to have a comfy opportunity to work out color temperature concepts in a real-life location, not just a portrait from a photo. 

Cool Light/Warm Shadow = Brain Buster

 

3/10/25 Both exercises done with Prismacolors
in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook

Unattributed reference photo

The final assignment in Sarah Bixler’s class was to use reference photos with relatively cool light and warm shadows, which is the reverse of how I usually see and interpret light/shadow. For the first one (above), I used the same reference photo (unattributed) that Sarah had used in her demo.

Per her suggestion, I kept the lighted side fairly saturated while the shaded side was more of a mix of warm/cool and therefore less saturated. While Sarah explained her interpretation and logic as she demo’d, what she said made sense. But when I tried to do it myself, I got confused and befuddled! The light didn’t seem cool at all, nor did the shadow side seem particularly warm.

Feeling frustrated that I didn’t do it right, I tried again, this time with an Earthsworld reference photo (below). I deliberately chose one with a warm shadow side enhanced by a warm light under his chin reflected from his yellow shirt. To avoid the repeat of my confusion, I took a more mechanical approach that had worked for me previously: I determined that the warmest area was under his chin. Relative to that, everything else on his face was cooler. Though my approach feels mechanical, I think the second one’s result is much better. More important, I felt more solidly that I “get it,” even when the logical warm light/cool shadow is reversed.

3/11/25

Earthsworld reference photo

Whew! I took her class because of the brain blowouts I had gotten during her previous workshops . . . and this time, the blowouts continued, all the way to the end! One thing is for sure: I cannot unsee what I have learned to see about color temperature! Portraiture from photos is all fine and good for learning concepts, but we all know what I really want to do: Practice what I’ve learned out in the real world!

Ramping Up Color Temperature (Plus Thoughts on Colored Pencils)

 

3/1/25 Rainbow of hues without crossing the color wheel
(all exercises done with Prismacolors in Stillman & Birn
Zeta sketchbook; same Earthsworld reference photo for all)

Week 4’s assignments in Sarah Bixler’s class extended the palette to primary triads and a full rainbow. For the rainbow exercise, we were instructed to avoid blending “across the color wheel” (to create neutrals) and instead maintain fully saturated hues as much as possible, blending only analogously. The result would enable us to demonstrate our understanding of color temperature without neutrals muddying things up. Although the resulting portrait is wacky looking (at left), it certainly was effective in forcing me not to fudge!

For the other two portraits, we were to use a traditional painter’s primary triad and what Sarah calls a printer’s primary triad (what I refer to as CYMK). These were much easier for me because of all the primary triads I had played with a few years ago (and still find fascinating to explore).

3/2/25 printer's primary triad (CYMK)

On one of them, we could add a warm neutral and a cool neutral to help with values if needed (below). I thought the latter additions would be helpful, but in practice, I regretting losing the clarity of the triad hues.

3/3/25 painter's traditional primary triad with addition of indigo and
burnt sienna as cool/warm neutrals

Why use colored pencils?

During a class discussion, one student, a painter, asked sort of a devil’s advocate question: Why use colored pencils instead of paint? Sarah’s response was especially interesting to me as both a colored pencil geek and an urban sketcher: Initially she had started using colored pencils because she was looking for a portable medium that she could use when she was out biking or hiking and wanted to stop for a quick plein air study.

The more she used them, however, the more she realized that colored pencils had unique properties that paint did not. With paints, she can mix any color she wants, but the more she mixes, the less her original chosen palette is apparent. Colored pencils make it easier for her to see how each color addition affects how she perceives the other hues. Because transparent pencils mix optically and can’t blend completely as paint can, they won’t lose their original color identity.

She also finds that because the earlier marks cannot be completely obscured by later layers, she has more opportunity to push toward abstraction. “A nice wonky abstraction is possible,” Sarah said. She enjoys the clear, directional marks that pencils make.

Her comments validated many thoughts I’ve had myself but haven’t always articulated about why colored pencils are a unique, compelling medium.

Temperature Study at PCC

 

2/23/25 PCC Green Lake (color temperature study)

Ching, Natalie and I got together for lunch and a play date at PCC Green Lake. The view from the café area is extremely blah, even by my low standards, but you know me – I’m always up for a challenge (especially with good company). My self-challenge of the day: Use the same color temperature principles I’m learning in Sarah Bixler’s class on location.

Facing the windows, the view was slightly better than the salad bar behind me. The seated woman left shortly after I started the sketch, but not before I had quickly blocked in the color temperatures. When another woman took her place, I knew the values would be the same, so it was easy to put those in even though the original woman was gone. It was another good reason to focus on color first before values, per Sarah’s recommendations.

This murky, hazy style that we are using in class for portraits is sort of the opposite of my hard-line comics style with markers that I’ve been using for a while, so it’s quite a leap for me. I’m not sure I like it, but I’m using it to nail down the concepts in my brain. Ultimately, I want to find a way to integrate what I’m learning with my own style.

Temperature Before Values

 

2/21/25 Prismacolors in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook
(The triangle at the bottom is one way to mix three hues
to see the range of neutral shades available.)

The assignments in Sarah Bixler’s class last week were a fascinating exploration of values and color temperature. First, we were to make a values study of a face using colored tape in a collage-like way (see below). When I had taken her class previously, we did a similar exercise, so the concept wasn’t new to me, but I remember how much fun it was – and informative. 

And it was again! Tape, especially without using scissors to cut small pieces, is a crude medium, so it’s impossible to get fussy with details. In addition, the tape is straight, so you get angles instead of curves. It’s liberating to focus only on values and not have to look at proportions, features or anything else.

Using the collage as a reminder of values, I used the same reference photo to draw a portrait. She suggested we choose one warm and one cool (I chose orange and green) to establish the main color temperatures. Once the temperatures were blocked in at about the same middle value, we were to choose a third color fairly close on the color wheel to one of the other two chosen colors (I chose blue). The third color would push the other hues in the appropriate temperature direction.

Values study made with tape -- fun!

One big question I had from the previous week’s exercises was how to see color temperature independent of values. Despite the orange and blue I had chosen for those exercises being about the same values, I kept thinking of blue as “darker,” so I’d use it to apply darker values without paying attention to whether those areas were actually cooler. Sarah answered my question by saying she almost always establishes color temperature first before focusing on values. This was a bit of a mind-blower, as I’ve heard most instructors say the opposite – always establishing values first before color. I followed her suggestion for this exercise, however, and it definitely made it easier for me to avoid confusion between value and temperature.

Color Temperature: Clicking into Place?

 

2/15/25 orange/blue only
(all exercises done with Prismacolors in Stillman &Birn Zeta sketchbook)

In the second session of Sarah Bixler’s class, Sarah gave us a lengthy demo of her portraiture style using color temperature as the focus. As I had felt in her earlier workshops, I’m both intrigued and perplexed at the same time, and I jumped into the homework eagerly.

Two challenges collided: The first was the same as in the initial exercise (when we focused only on values by using black) – the difficulty of “painting” only the abstract value shapes instead of rendering with a contour line. The second challenge was simultaneously paying attention to color temperature and its relativity.

Assigned to draw three portraits using reference images of our choice, I went to my favorite portrait go-to, Earthsworld, for two. For the first (at right), we were to use only orange and blue for the color temperature range. The gradient under the portrait shows the range from warm (pure orange) to cool (pure blue) and everything in between. The middle of the gradient bar should be close to a neutral gray.

A trick I used was to first identify the coolest area (his shirt) and the warmest areas (the sunlit side of his face near the highlight) and make those pure blue and pure orange. From there, as I moved around the drawing, I kept asking, Is this spot warmer than the shirt? Cooler than the sunlit side of his face? I’m not sure whether she would recommend this tactic, but it seemed to help me.

For the second exercise, we were to begin with brown (warm) and black (cool) to establish values first. After that was done, we added orange and blue to indicate temperature more clearly. This version was easier for me because I could look at values without confusing the issue with hue (below). I remembered to take a photo right after I made the initial block-in of “value shapes” – so challenging without drawing a contour line! But it does help to hold the pencil loosely and use the broad side of the point so that color goes on as widely as possible – like paint.

"Value shapes" during initial block-in

2/16/25 Brown/black used first to establish values

The last exercise (below) – similar to the first except using burnt ochre (warm) and peacock green (cool) – I had to laugh through most of it! Sarah had suggested using a selfie for one, so I chose a very unflattering, harshly lighted photo with a three-quarter view that I find especially daunting. I actually thought the unflattering photo might help me to abstract the shapes more easily! HA! I’ll tell you what was helpful, though: For the initial block-in, I turned the reference photo upside-down!

2/18/25 burnt ochre and peacock green (Brownie points for me
that I even turned this one in!)

Although that last one was painful and humbling, that’s when things started to click into place for me. In the first one, I felt like I was automatically thinking of blue as “darker” than orange and relying on it to darken the values without regard to temperature, which then confused me. As you can see from the gradient bar that I converted to grayscale below, in reality, both orange and blue are about the same value (in fact, the whole gradient is). By the time I got to the selfie, I started “seeing” that darker areas can be warm, and lighter areas can be cool – temperature is not the same as values. Holy heck, am I really starting to get it??

I remember sort of arriving at this point toward the end of her previous workshops, but without more practice and feedback, it felt slippery, and I was never confident that I understood enough to internalize what I learned. I hope that the remaining three classes will help me solidify what feels like I’m just beginning to grasp.

Orange/blue gradient from first exercise converted to grayscale

Play Date at Third Place Commons

 

2/17/25 Third Place Commons in Lake Forest Park (Caran d'Ache Luminance and Museum Aquarelle pencils in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook)

The day after the Suzzallo Library USk outing, I had another opportunity to practice warm/cool color studies on location at an art play date with Roy and Mary Jean. I also got an idea to use watercolor pencils and non-soluble colored pencils together in a strategic way. I had tried it years ago but then forgot about it until my current colored pencil class reawakened old ideas.

Same pencils in one of our round-robin Seawhite of Brighton concertina books

The strategy is to use non-soluble pencils first for the drawing and the main coloring. Then in areas where I want more saturated coverage, I used watercolor pencils with washes, often in the opposite color as the initial layer. The non-soluble pencil marks show through, retaining the “pencil look” that I often miss after I’ve activated watercolor pencils too smoothly.

So exciting to be using and thinking about colored pencils again!

Color Studies at Suzzallo

 

2/16/25 Red Square and Suzzallo Library, UW campus

Warm, cozy, artistically challenging – Suzzallo Library on the University of Washington campus is a winter mainstay for USk Seattle. If the size of our group last Sunday is any indication, we have high pent-up demand for comfortable sketching opportunities – what a turnout!

While I waited for others to show up at the library entrance, I made a couple of quick sketches of Red Square to set the location (above). Once inside, I wasn’t in the mood to challenge myself with daunting architecture. Instead, I picked one of the elegant pillars flanking the stairway to finish the page.

That done, I spent the rest of the outing pulling out different media to experiment with tone and color temperature (which have been on mind with Sarah Bixler’s class). The small monochrome of Suzzallo’s main reading room entrance (left) was made in the round-robin concertina book I’m sharing with Roy and Mary Jean.

Elsewhere in the library, I found quiet spots to study color temperature using watercolor pencils (below). At lower right, the strong diagonal is one of many internal supports throughout Suzzallo. They look jarring mixed in with the stately Collegiate Gothic Revival architectural style, but it’s reassuring to know that the centenarian building is seismically safe.

Pent-up demand!

Color Temperature with Sarah Bixler

 

Prismacolor and Polychromos palettes recommended by Sarah Bixler

Although I’ve taken quite a few classes and workshops in the past decade with colored pencils and watercolor pencils as the primary medium, none has intrigued me as much as the ones I’ve had with Sarah Bixler. My introduction in 2021 was a weekend workshop with portraiture as the focus. Still reassembling my brain after having it blown open with new concepts, I took another workshop a few weeks later that was similar but used the full figure as our subject.

In both cases, it wasn’t necessarily life drawing that interested me; it was her focus on color temperature and her application of colored pencils with a strong painterly approach.

Polychromos

For quite a while afterwards, I worked on trying to apply her principles and approach to urban sketching, but I realized I still had so much more to learn to think like a painter. When I saw that she was offering another class, I jumped on it. Instead of in-studio weekend workshops like the previous two were, this course is five weeks, which I’ve found to be the most effective format for me when I want to get a solid handle on complex concepts.

 “Interpreting the Portrait” again focuses on the portrait, and this one is online. Typically I wouldn’t be interested in taking a life-drawing course online, but since the subject is less important to me than the concepts, I decided that learning from photos would be OK. After nearly a year of trying something entirely different with a comics approach using mostly markers, I’m super excited to get my brain back into color, color temperature and especially colored pencils!

To begin with, Sarah recommended a specific palette of Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils based on color temperature (a cool and a warm of each hue, plus some grays, black and white), which I was already familiar with from her previous workshops. A former user of Prismacolors, she now prefers Polychromos, but not because of expected reasons such as hardness or color range; she just got tired of contemporary Prismacolors breaking all the time!

For the kind of application technique she uses, I prefer a softer core than Polychromos. Hearing her reason for favoring them, I used the Polychromos palette she had specified as a guide and pulled out comparable hues from my Prismacolors (vintage, of course, to avoid the breakage issue). I plan to try both as the course goes on.

Prismacolor (mostly vintage plus a few contemporary)

In an online course from home, I would normally have my full sets easily accessible. But my studio has been in a transitional mess for the past several months, and I’m starting to pack my drawing desk (poor timing with this class, I know!). With the hope of avoiding constantly digging through packing boxes, I’m acting like I’m taking an in-person class and filled a pencil case with the two limited palettes. It’s a stretch of the imagination, I know, but I’m pretending these are the only colored pencils I own! (Ha-ha, I can hear you chuckling!)

For today’s post, which is already long, I’ll just show you the palettes. When I finish the first week’s assignment, I’ll write a separate post.

Amaryllis, Part 1

 

Left side of page spread (Derwent Inktense Blocks in Hahnemuhle 100% cotton sketchbook)

As she has the last couple of years, a thoughtful friend gave me another potted amaryllis for Christmas because she knows how much I have enjoyed sketching them in the past. The first year, I took an illustrative approach – fairly tight, trying to be as accurate as possible. Last year I went looser using Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble crayons.

Trying to stay loose again, this year I’m using Derwent Inktense Blocks. They are what I have always wanted Neocolor IIs to be – not waxy and crayon-y (as Neo IIs are), but less dry and more something-y (how’s that for an articulate description?)! I still haven’t found a way to describe these blocks, but I sure like the way they apply and activate.

Right side of page spread

One issue I’ve had every year is that the amaryllis grows so tall that it’s difficult to find a place to put it while I sketch. My desk is way too high, yet the floor is too low. Propped up on a plastic storage bin on the floor is still a bit low, so I start out looking down on it, but by the time it reaches its full height (more than 22 inches this year), it works out well.

The storage bin makes a good foot rest as well
as a prop for the plant.

Another issue is lighting. Since my usual desk lamp can’t illuminate it, the ceiling light and natural light from a side window clash, giving indistinct highlights and shadows. Having had difficulty with lighting in the past, this year I am practicing faking it better with color temperature: I use a warmer red and yellow on the side that should be illuminated by the window, and a cooler red and cooler green on the side that should be in shade.

A third challenge is that this year’s gift has two stalks instead of one – twice as many blossoms to enjoy but also to fit into the composition! I’m not sketching it daily as I have in the past, but I’ve still already filled the first page spread (shown today as Part 1; stay tuned for Part 2 when all the blossoms finish opening).

This is a good opportunity to show you how I store my Inktense Blocks. Since I bought them all open stock, I don’t have a flat tin to store them in (which is just as well, because all Derwent tins annoy me – they are difficult to open, and the lid is not attached – a clumsy design). Rummaging through my supply of storage boxes and bins, I found a tin with a hinged lid and, even better, a transparent window. I think I initially bought it with the intention of making a teeny, tiny sketch kit. In any case, it’s just the right size to contain all the blocks I own (including a few not shown here because they are in my auxiliary sketch bag). The best part is that the tin has no room to spare, so I can’t acquire more blocks (an enforced limitation is the easiest way to manage my tendency to obtain all the colors of anything).

I chose the five blocks on top based on color temperature.

A tidy storage box -- and no room for more!

First of eight blossoms open!

Secondary Triad Portraits

 

2/18/23 Derwent Lightfast pencils in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook 

After making that portrait of Gabi with a secondary triad (which was mostly a whim), I got interested in the idea of trying more portraits with secondaries (the first three shown here). It brought back to mind the color temperature concepts I learned from Sarah Bixler more than a year ago.

Obviously, the secondary triad hues are difficult (and generally unflattering) to use for skin tones, especially green, but let’s be honest – the portrait practice I’ve been doing is not with the intention of flattering the models! Once I let go of the zombie potential, I started becoming fascinated with mixing interesting neutrals and trying to convey values based on color temperature. All three of these Earthsworld reference photos were taken in flat lighting, which made them even more challenging. On the other hand, the absence of sharp shadows and strong highlights gave me more opportunities to work on subtle value shifts based on color temperature.

2/19/23 Lightfast pencils in S&B Zeta sketchbook

My general approach is to begin with the lightest/warmest value (orange) to block in the large shapes and features lightly and to color the overall face. Then I use the darkest/coolest value (violet) to gradually darken values. Finally, I mix in green in some areas to continue neutralizing the hues. The greens I’ve chosen in these three examples are cool – close to my urban sketching “cool” secondary triad for winter – so it’s in between warm orange and cool violet, but closer to violet.

2/19/23 Bic ballpoints and Walnut Hollow pencil in Uglybook

The weirdest mixed-media attempt is at right: Bic ballpoint with colored pencil! I don’t normally mix ballpoint with pencil – to me, they are the wrong textures to combine – but my motivation was less than inspirational. It was a late-evening sketch, and my “downstairs studio” contained purple and green Bics, but the orange was upstairs. What the heck – I grabbed a convenient orange pencil. Laziness is the mother of creativity.

Most of the other portraits in this post (all references by Earthsworld) were made in my more conventional manner with two colors – a cool and a warm or a light and a dark – which is the simplest way to make value studies of faces.

2/13/23 Faber-Castell Pitt Artist brush pen and
Walnut Hollow colored pencils in Uglybook 

2/13/23 Walnut Hollow colored pencils in Uglybook

As for resemblance, I find I still grapple with my own need for it. When I try a looser approach, such as the long-haired man below, it’s at the expense of likeness. When I’m “tight,” I have a better chance of capturing resemblance (most of these are not too bad in that regard). I keep telling myself that resemblance is not the only goal for portraiture and that I shouldn’t care so much about it, but then I do. It’s hard to let go.

2/13/23 Pitt Artist pen, Walnut Hollow colored pencils
in Uglybook

Looseness at the expense of resemblance.

2/15/23 Conte pastel pencils in Uglybook

Probably my best capture of resemblance among the examples
shown here, but also one of the "tightest."