At the outset, I have to admit I have never liked drawing with colored pencils.  Sanguine Conté?  Yes.  Charcoal?  Definitely.  Ink?  Love it.  Oil Paint?  I have a fantasy of retiring and painting in oils every day.  Graphite?  Any Day!  Colored Pencils?  No.  I have just never felt comfortable with them.

Maybe it’s the brand of pencils that I have used.  I don’t like the waxiness and how you can build up only to a certain point and then the paper is saturated and you can’t add more.  Maybe it’s that you can never fully erase them although it seems like you should be able to.  It could be that I’m just too impatient.  Or just the feel.

Well, today changed my mind a little bit and made me reconsider colored pencils.  I liked Spencer’s approach with them, of using just a limited palette.  Watching him develop his drawings I felt like it could be fun to try again.  I did enjoy drawing today, I put on some music and relaxed into it.  I used the Camera Lucida for the two drawings I did from the photos in Spencer’s slideshow, which meant that I could concentrate on using the pencils without having to worry about measuring.  Do I now love colored pencils and feel like I will continue to use them in my own artistic practice?  Nope, I still love my familiar standbys way more.

Do I think I would use them in the classroom?  Yes.  I think that Spencer’s approach to drawing with the colored pencils is great, using limited color and sketching.  I really liked his explanation of “active lines,”  and I kept in in mind as I sketched, trying not to get too precious.  I don’t like drawing from other peoples’ photos though, so if I did this exercise in class I think I would have the students draw from a still life or a model, or from their own photos, maybe even with a camera lucida.  (I want to make a make-your own-camera-lucida workshop, I think it is a great way to combine photography and drawing.)

Here are my drawings from today:

Here are pictures from my imagination.