Life Drawing

As I mentioned in my last few posts, I was first introduced to the Koh-i-noor "magic" pencil by my life drawing professor at EMU, Prof. Washington. He used the "magic" pencils in his own sketchbook, paired with a hatching or cross-hatching shading technique, and encouraged us to try them out as well.

Here are some of my best drawings using the Koh-i-noor "magic" pencil from the two Life Drawing courses I took at EMU (in 2007 and 2008). We also did a lot of drawing in charcoal, but I'll save those for another future post.

A couple of these images are #NSFW - Life Drawing classes tend to work from nude models. But most of these are sketchbook pages/self-portraits, focusing on the face.

Rialto Bridge Drawing

This drawing is based on a source photo of the Rialto Bridge in Venice, Italy, which I took in 2010. I used a Koh-i-noor brand "magic pencil" on 110# white cardstock paper to achieve these great colors.

Here are the "in process" photos:

And here are some close-up shots of the details:

The Instagram response has been great!

Notre Dame Drawing

Yesterday I showed you photos of my Chenonceau castle drawing, which I created with a Koh-i-noor magic pencil. I've completed two others in the same style. Today's post is all about Notre Dame, in Paris, France.

This is the back view of the cathedral, with its beautiful flying buttresses and Gothic style. The source photo comes from the trip to France I took in 2010.

Here are the step-by-step pictures:

And here are some close-up shots of the details.

These will be up on Etsy for purchase soon. In the meantime, the response on Instagram has been great!

Chateau de Chenonceau Drawing

I was introduced to Koh-i-noor's "magic" style colored pencils by my life drawing professor at EMU. He used them in his own daily sketchbook drawings, and encouraged us to use them for large scale and small scale sketches. I purchased several back then, and then rarely used them, focusing instead on the standard Prismacolor pencil set I had.

Then, when I was reorganizing my studio lately, I "rediscovered" those pencils. I decided I wanted to play around with them again, and landed on using travel photos as source images - because I also wanted to practice my architecture/perspective drawing skills.

These "magic" pencils have multiple hues blended together into one fat pencil. The color scheme I used for this drawing was the primary color triad pencil, which combined red, blue, and yellow. The source photo I used was a picture I took in 2005, on my class trip to France. The castle is Chateau de Chenonceau, near Paris.

Here are the process photos for how I created the drawing step-by-step:

And here is the finished sketch, with some close-up detail shots of the drawing and the "magic" pencil I used:

The sketch turned out so well that I decided to do several others. Tomorrow's post will show the next drawing in this series.

I posted the final image on Instagram and got a lot of positive comments!