Borgeson - Colored Pencil for the Serious Beginner: Basic Lessons in Becoming a Good Artist

It is important to me to have all my tools visible and within easy reach of my drawing board. Jars of various sizes are perfect for organizing pencils by color, length, and sometimes brands. I also have a revolving caddy on a shelf under my taborets tabletop for materials that are less used.

The tools in any art medium contain characteristics and idiosyncrasies of their own. They have a weight and a feel about them. As any regular user of tools knows, the right tool can seem like an almost magical extension of mind and hand. The wrong tool can seem antagonisticeven angry. When you begin to work at art, you enter into a partnership with all of your materials. It is important that they be friendly to your efforts, and that as you use them they allow your mind to be open, active, and unencumbered by any resistance from them.

In the materials of the colored pencil medium are described, as are some of my opinions about them. An example of this is discussion about the merits of a handheld sharpener versus an electric sharpener. For even the seemingly simple task of sharpening pencils (no small thing with this medium) can be frustrating and time wasting if the tool chosen is the wrong one for you. So it is with paper and even the nature of the pencils themselves. This first chapter is offered in the hope of helping sort out such issues, and of guiding you in the selection of your materials. It also includes a frank discussion of workspacesof how simple a space is truly needed, and what kind of studio lighting works best when working with colored pencils.

Colored pencils now come in a multitude of brandsdomestic and foreignand vary widely in such characteristics as softness, strength of color, and manufacturers quality control. Generally, however, all colored pencils can be divided into two basic categories: water-soluble and non-water-soluble.

Non-water-soluble pencils are wax- or oil-based, and are considered the more lightfast, or resistant to fading, of the two. Water-soluble pencils appear more like watercolor when used with water and a brush. In actual use, however, both kinds of pencil are easily compatible with each other. And most all brands of true colored pencils can be successfully blended and used together.