Sketching with coloured pencils

When you look at the works of sketchers - the community of urban sketchers and others - you will find that the prevalent medium that is used for colour is watercolour. They even use it in their sketchbooks on the go. The advantage is that you can take a small palette and mix lots of colours with it. And there are waterbrushes now, so you don't have to carry a separate container with water.

Those sketches, often with outlines in pen and ink, look great and I've always loved watercolour paintings. Though, I can't imagine using them myself, let alone in my sketchbook. When I started out, my aim was to draw, not to paint. And to mess around with water in my sketchbook doesn't sound appealing to me.

A medium for colour, that is dry and easy to carry around and goes well with graphite pencils, is coloured pencils. You can use them like your graphite pencils, doing outlines and shading and hatching - quickly bringing some colour to your sketch. It might take a bit longer to colour your sketch with them than with watercolour, but you don't have to wait for anything to dry before you can move on. They even look great with pen and ink.

An artist who likes to sketch with coloured pencils and has done so for more than 20 years is Katherine Tyrrell. She offers a free pdf with "10 reasons to sketch with coloured pencils". It also shows a few of her beautiful sketches. If you feel like seeing more of them got to http://travelsketch.blogspot.com.

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Introduction

I have been drawing for 20 months now. I started back then, because I wanted a creative hobby, that you can do on a daily basis without needing lots of material initially. So I decided to learn a bit about the basics of drawing, practiced and soon found out, that it is easier than everybody thinks. And after all, you don't have to be perfect for it to be fun and for your drawings to be valuable. You are free to find your own way of drawing. While drawing as often as possible, I often find myself thinking a lot about this craft and me doing it. I certainly like drawing and sketching in sketchbooks. They are like journals you can browse through again and again and see what you were up to when you filled them. I am going to share my thoughts about drawing here and hopefully will dare to share one or the other drawing.

New Sketchbook

There is nothing like preparing a new sketchbook after you have finished the previous one. I like to decorate the insides of the front and back cover with stickers. One that says „Sylvia‘s sketchbook no. x“ and some simply for decoration. After filling the first page I also add the month I started it. After filling the last page I then add the month I finished it. The stuff on the right is just digital.

Architecture

Drawing architecture can be intimidating. A simple house or part of it is no problem. But something more complicated with lots of details tends to leave you overwhelmed. Where to start and how much detail to include? I'm not experienced in drawing more complicated buildings. So when I came across this photo of a church in Arles I liked the perspective, but at first wasn't sure if I could draw this. But I must have felt adventurous and went ahead. I grabbed a pencil and started with the basic shapes of the tower. Then proceeded with the basic shapes of the rest of the building - as much of it as fit on my page. Then the windows and some other, more detailed parts of the church. I didn't think much about perspective, just drew what I saw. With pencil you can always correct things if they don't work out. I would not have dared to draw this with pen from the start. When the pencil sketch looked good, I went over it with a fineliner. I added some more details an...

Sylvia‘s Art Journey

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