Although I have a handful of university level studio art courses to my name, I graduated with a science degree, not an art degree, and on the whole I am self taught. Pencil was my first love, and it was the first medium I really excelled in. I was a dedicated pencil artist for years before I began to experiment with other mediums...but once I started, it was impossible to stop. My art is in a constant state of evolution and it's difficult to break it down into straightforward categories, as I often use a variety of mediums to finish my pieces, but these are the foundation of my work:
Graphite
Graphite was how it all began for me. It was the medium I drew my very first truly excellent photorealistic portrait with as a teenager, and for a long time it was the only medium I worked in. To this day, graphite is the most popular portrait option amongst my commission clients. It allows me to create within a spectrum of rich, grey tones, for a "black and white photograph" look, and when it comes to precision and fine detail, nothing comes close to it in terms of what I am able to achieve. Graphite can be applied with a needle-sharp tip, within a vast tonal range, and, in many cases, slight errors can be reversed without damaging the paper. Which gives me as close to absolute control as I ever have with my art (no wonder I love this medium so much!). I love using graphite for portraits of short-haired animals in particular, and for pieces that are going to involve very intricate detail. |
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Colored Pencil
Sounds like a good medium for a 5th grade art project, not a professional artist, but colored pencil has become one of my most well-loved and most versatile mediums, and, furthermore, it is the foundation of the pieces I consider to be my greatest work to date. I use both oil-based colored pencils and water-based colored pencils, often mixing them with other mediums and blending agents, but never with one another.
Traditional Colored Pencil
This is my term for the colored pencil work I do without any involving other media. It is colored pencil for that is meant to look like colored pencil art - soft, with a fairly fine degree of detail, rich in color but not overly saturated, with the texture of the paper visible and playing a part in the look of the art. I use oil-based Faber-Castell Polychromos and Caran D'Ache Pablo pencils for my traditional colored pencil work, often with mineral spirits as a blending agent. Traditional colored pencil is what I consider to be the perfect color counterpart to my classic graphite portraits, and I particularly like using it for furry and fuzzy and highly textured animals.
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Colored Pencil with Powder Blender
Powder Blender, created by professional artist and author Alyona Nickelsen, is a brand new product in the art world, and it's revolutionizing colored pencil art. To keep it brief, powder blender, used in combination with a textured fixative developed specifically for the purpose, is an archival, dry lubricant that allows oil-based colored pencils to be blended, layered and reworked almost endlessly, increasing color saturation and obscuring pencil strokes. With powder blender, I can create large washes of color, as if I had a paint brush, without losing the ability to create fine, exacting detail, and I am also able to get some really fun effects. The end result looks more like pastel or oil than it does pencil. Powder blender is relatively new to me, but already it is one of my favorite mediums for my own original art. It is also an option for color portraits, particularly if some sort of background or context is desired.
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Watercolor and Watercolor Pencil
Watercolor Pencil
Watercolor pencil is a bit of a crossover category. It's colored pencil, of course, but I rarely use it without also using watercolor paints. Like watercolor paints, watercolor pencil is a fantastic medium for a more loose, relaxed, fun, quirky and abstract composition. I am only in the early stages of familiarizing myself with this medium, but I see in it a great potential for smaller, more impressionistic portraits.
Watercolor is my newest medium, and it is quickly proving to be versatile and a lot of fun. I use it as a standalone medium, but I also often mix it with watercolor pencil and/or ink, to create really interesting effects. Watercolor is a wonderful medium for more impressionistic pieces, in which I allow myself to "draw outside the lines," so to speak - or paint, as the case may be. Watercolor is somewhat unpredictable by nature, and I find it a wonderful medium for my impressionistic portraits, which are more loose and abstract, more about the personality and energy of the animal than about making sure each whisker is at exactly the right angle. It can also be a great option for those who want to commission an original work of art that is a little smaller and less expensive than my typical portraits.
