Unnatural Mutation – Illustrations by Caitlin Hackett
Posted: March 4, 2013 Filed under: Inspiration | Tags: animals, art, Artist, Caitlin Hackett, colored pencil, drawing, illustration, nature, painting, pen, surreal, traditional, Watercolor 2 Comments
Vulpes Masquerade by Caitlin Hackett
Caitlin Hackett is a traditional artist in my home borough of Brooklyn NY with a truly interesting style. Almost all of her illustrations start off with drawing all the lines with a ball-point pen on a large piece of paper. The size of which ranges anywhere between 4in by 6in to a baffling 4 1/2ft by 5ft. After Caitlin lays out each individual line, she goes back in with colored pencil and watercolor to add shading and depth. This technique that she has clearly mastered is a pain-staking process but yields amazing results. The final piece marries crisp, flowing line-work with subtle bleeds of color. Her technique alone is a work of art, but the roots of her inspiration behind the artwork creates a whole other level of interest.
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Back To The Roots – Colored Pencil Drawings From My Past
Posted: July 10, 2012 Filed under: Sketchbook | Tags: art, artwork, bridge, colored pencil, drawing, landscape, paper, sketch, Surrealism, traditional, vines, water 4 Comments
Pulling You In – Colored Pencil Drawing by Nicole Cleary
Coming back to the roots of where I started in my art career, I decided to show some older pieces I created with traditional media. My professors described my art style in college as “painting with colored pencils”. I’d pull out my 250+ PrismaColor pencils set and disappear for hours, coming back with hand-cramps, the stubs of what used to be colored pencils, and a smile on my face. I would use extremely thin solid lines and a plethora of bright, saturated colors to create each artwork. Towards the end of each piece, I would go over the sketchy colored pencil with a white (or neutral colored pencil for the background) coloring over every line to blend the colors together. Each PrismaColor set came with a smudge stick for this very intention, but I hated the effect the smudge stick created. It was too wide and blurred all the lines instead of mixing the colors on the paper in specific areas. Using a thin tipped colored pencil allowed me to keep the crisp edges I wanted in some sections while blurring the colors in other sections. I found that when I moved to digital art with my Intous 4 Wacom tablet, the essence of my style remained.
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Nicole M. Cleary 