www.penciltopics.co.uk

 

WHAT IS THIS WEBSITE FOR

and why does it exist ?

 

Over several years of assembling notes for teaching art classes, and handing the notes out in various combinations, it struck me that they form a substantial resource which would be a shame to file away unseen.  Some of the notes relate to general art topics like perspective, and composition, but most cover the teaching I have been doing over the last few years with Coloured Pencils.

When I first started in art, I gained an enormous benefit from the www.handprint.com   web site which offers a load of technical information on Watercolours. so it is good to offer my small contribution to the same spring of freely offered information in return.      

This site is not promoted, If you find it, and find it of value, then feel free to tell others.  

For those of my past students who visit, welcome back, good to see you !         

 

Peter Weatherill  2009

 

A GENTLE WARNING !

What you read here is a personal view .  

These notes have been assembled from personal experience, information in books, magazines, discussions with other artists on Internet Forums and from speaking to other artists over some 10 years.  

Where I know an original source, I have given it,  But in many cases the origin is no longer known and I apologise in advance if, on the odd entry, I have not acknowledged an outside source I may have used or if I infringe any copyright.  

 

The images here are mostly all mine.  Those that are not, have the artist’s name quoted.   If you see something here that you know should have an acknowledgement, please tell me and I will put it right straight away

Where a page looks at products, it describes those available in the UK at the time of writing.  The information here is made available in good faith with the intention of providing a freely accessible resource on a specialist subject for those starting out in this interesting art medium.  The site is no more infallible than I am !     

 

THE SITE IS UK BASED and looks at the UK market.

HOWEVER, Over half of the visitors to the site in 2009 were from outside the UK,

and most of those were from the USA.  

To my readers from that big world outside, I hope that you find the content of the site useful.  It is written purely from a UK perspective, however, so some products you are familiar with may not yet have found their way to the UK, and vice versa !!

 

THIS WEB SITE

Was launched in 2008 and has been ‘WORK IN PROGRESS’ ever since

From an initial 12 pages it grew to over 200.

The whole site has now been revised ( August 2010 ) and whilst the number of pages has been drastically cut down, the same amount of information is included.  Hopefully the site is now easier to navigate and read.  We now have an internal Google search engine ( which generally finds things, but is not perfect ).  

Please let me know if there are any bugs in the new system or areas where presentation could be improved.  Thank You.

 

On adjoining pages in this opening section,

 

1/  there is a  GLOSSARY of Coloured Pencil terms which was put together by Bill Coulter in the Spring of 2007, and published on the excellent forum website, www.scribbletalk.com.  

I cannot recommend Scribbletalk highly enough as a friendly and helpful resource full of useful data.  You need to register to get full value from the site, but registration is free and simple.

Thank You Bill for the information, and for letting me use it.

 

2/  IN ADDITION there is a page describing how to use the PDF file facility.

PDF files are those written to a format which is opened by and printed  by Adobe Reader Software, which is free to download from Adobe over the Internet.

In the earlier lives of this website, PDF files were available for all the major pages to simplify printing off permanent copies of the notes.

These PDF pages take a lot of time to set up ( on separate software from the  website software ) and every update needs an update of the complete PDF page.   Checking the web statistics, the PDF files had a low rate of  interest, and I have therefore taken the opportunity to change the layout of the site to offer an alternative that is much easier for me to manage.  PDF files are still available for the Step by Step pages, and Step by Step notes.

If you want to take hard copies of the pages here, please see the PDF  file section that follows and that offers some suggestions.

You are free to copy and use the information here, but if you publish them on in any format, I would appreciate a credit.  

I have marked most of the sheets as Copyright © but that is there as a precaution against major commercial theft.    

And Finally

 

3/ ALSO Featured in this opening section is a Page entitled ‘UPDATES’

 

This records all changes in the site after 1st February 2009 and could well be your first point of reference if you are checking back on the site at some future time

 

IF YOU SPOT ANYTHING THAT IS INCORRECT

OR NEEDS UPDATING, PLEASE LET ME KNOW

Latest revision April 2010