Latest Zentangles And Other Doodles

Here is a selection of some of my most recent Zentangles and other doodle drawings. All are rendered in a variety of coloured pencil, Faber Castell Polychromos or Derwent soft pencil, which are the main pencils I use. I also use  Derwent water colour and Derwent Inktense pencils.

It is often not easy to decide what pencil to use but this depends on what you are trying to achieve, if I only want a simple coloured pencil drawing I just use pencils that will look good as the are, such as Faber Castell Polychromos or Derwent soft pencil, without the need to add water or other medium such as a solvent which I don’t like to use. If I want a drawing that is a bit more interesting and resembles a painting with blending and so forth I choose Derwent watercolour and Derwent Inktense pencils.

 

 

 

 

Here is a selection of links with information about coloured pencils :

Inktense

Secrets for Using Derwent Inktense Colored Pencils

Derwent Inktense is a very new art supply. They’ve only joined the ranks of watermedia in the past few years. They didn’t exist in the year 2000.
Read More:
https://feltmagnet.com/drawing/Secrets-for-Using-Derwent-Inktense-Colored-Pencils

According to this website you are advised not to use cheap pencils with professional ones

Can you mix professional colored pencils with normal ones?

Here is a readers question

Reader Question: Can you mix professional colored pencils with normal ones? I noticed on your site you said Prismacolors are the best, and luckily I have a set of those (48). I also have some Faber-Castells and Reeves that I got over the years as gifts.

So my question is, can I safely mix (that is, draw on the same drawing) with all of these colored pencils? If I start a drawing using Prismacolors, should I use only Prismacolors in that drawing?

I’m asking because I’m starting to run out of certain colors in my Prismacolor set and rather than buy a Prismacolor replacement, I’m wondering if I can just use the Faber-Castell or Reeves pencil instead.

Read the answer:

Can you mix professional colored pencils with normal ones?
https://www.art-is-fun.com/can-you-mix-professional-colored-pencils-with-normal-ones

This link has hints and tips about the correct way to use coloured pencils

Explore Key Colored Pencil Techniques

There are 4 major colored pencil techniques you need to know in order to achieve mastery.

Read more
http://www.explore-drawing-and-painting.com/colored-pencil-techniques.html

I admit I don’t bother with these techniques but maybe I should. It is however very time consuming and I lack patience, a common problem these days in our harried world were we wish to learn quickly and simply get on with the task at hand. I simply colour in the drawing sometimes using hatching to achieve a gradient but not often mixing colours or layering except on an odd occasion when I have to fill in a large area and want to give a multicolored effect. I tried burnishing but only the top layer and I found it made the colours less vibrant, but maybe I am not doing this correctly.  I don’t use solvents as I cannot cope with the strong smell or the need for ventilation. And reading through this now I can see that yes I had not done this technique properly my finished work would not have turned out as it did, hence the need from time to time to check out various methods. I do of course add water to water coloured pencils from time to time but not consistently.

The above is a useful article even for the most accomplished artist , don’t forget to click the link at the bottom of the page to check out the step by step tutorial which shows how the artist combines all colour pencil techniques: