Back To The Roots – Colored Pencil Drawings From My Past

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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