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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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