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THIS PAGE IS PART OF THE SECTION DEALING WITH

This link will take you direct to the main contents page for the site

THIS SECTION ALSO CONTAINS PAGES COVERING :

Coloured Pencil and ......

A sub section giving more details of some techniques involving

different Media with Coloured Pencils

 

 

GRAPHITE WITH COLOURED PENCIL

 

It was suggested on a previous page that Graphite used with CP should be of the harder variety - HB or harder - as a soft graphite will be more likely to smear.  Graphite tends to ‘shine’ through the transparency of wax coloured pencil and will usually still be visible even after several layers of colour on the top. This is why it is usually avoided when working with Coloured Pencils.

We need to think why we might wish to combine the two pencil media.

Graphite gives us the ability to use different grades of black from the different grades of pencil and there are notable attractions in working in monochrome. There is some beautiful work about which is entirely graphite.  However a modest use of colour can be very beneficial to highlight a picture.

Let us look at some examples.

In August 2012 we ran a feature on this topic on the Help and advice line page, and this has been taken from there.

 

Initially I had input from two artists, Gayle Mason and Linda Weil

Both these artists are working in animal studies, and you may like to get an idea of the ‘nearly monochrome’ style that I was looking for, below.

 

                  From Gayle Mason                                                                                   

 http://gaylemasonfineart.com/home.html     

 

                                                                                   

 

 

                                                                                            Gayle tells me that the image of a Jack Russell (left) is                                                                                                    mainly a mix of graphite and French Grey CP

                                                                                            plus CP for the eyes                                                  

 

                                                                                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gayle also sent me an image of the German Shepherd

portrait (right) which she felt was not quite so successful.

Gayle said : ‘The German Shepherd wasn't as successful

in my opinion  because  I didn't get the balance of graphite

to colour right, the colour looks heavy handed’

 

 

    

 

 Then I had some images from Linda Weil in Australia

 

 

 

Two Koala pictures by Linda.

On the left below is titled

‘Does my bum look big in this’ uses Derwent soluble graphite and Graphitint  

and  on the right  ‘Just hanging in there’ (left)  uses a single colour with four different grades of graphite.

For more of Linda and Gayle’s work see the links to their web sites        

 

above  

Australian artist  Linda Weil

 

http://home.exetel.com.aulindaweil/

You can see from the examples above how a modest use of colour can make a radical difference to the impact of a picture.

Using graphite encourages us to keep the colour limited where using Coloured Pencil might encourage a greater input of colour.

Very fine dark lines are also possible using harder graphite and the medium also enables a great variety of tones in the one colour.

Below  is shown an example from Pauline Longley who worked this picture called ‘The Rat Catcher’ in Graphite on a plastic surface called Mellotex with a 2B pencil .  Pauline’s Bog has a stage example of the work half way through:

http://art-pal.blogspot.com/      Check out the Blog entries for late August 2011  

After working the picture in Graphite alone ( First image below ), Pauline considered whether to add colour and decided to put in a modest amount - though is still unsure whether it has worked.    I think it did, but then we will all probably have a different view !        

I think the small amount of colour has linked the dog and the rat very nicely without spoiling the monochrome effect.

As you can see, balancing the colour, to enhance and show the best of the subject, can be an interesting challenge

MIXED MEDIA

A SUMMARY of VARIOUS COMBINATIONS of Media -The RULES on MIXED MEDIA for Exhibitions  

and also Two EXERCISES - The ARCHWAY  and  A COTTAGE ENTRANCE