Blueberries-Final

© Ellen Blonder

After working in this medium, I can't say I prefer it to watercolor or acrylics, but colored pencils do present some interesting challenges--and I always have fun with those. I'm used to mixing my green paints with black or red to gray them down before I paint leaves. Many green colored pencils seem way too bright, and it's much harder to tone them down to what I want. On the other hand, shading spherical shapes is much easier with pencils than paint. Next, I'll have to try a flower in pencils.

Blueberries-Day 3

© Ellen Blonder

Filling in blueberries all day today. It's a slower process to do shaded spheres in pencil than watercolor, but pencil is also more forgiving.

Blueberries-Day 2

© Ellen Blonder

I haven't tried drawing in colored pencil for many years. Feels odd not needing to mix my colors on a palette beforehand, and it takes a different kind of patience to build the color up slowly so the pencil tracks don't show. This is more fun than I expected.

Blueberries-Day 1

© Ellen Blonder

I photographed a branch heavy with blueberries last summer. I also bought some colored pencils and have been looking for a subject to sketch with them. My inspiration is a book by an artist I met in Kauai, who was there to co-teach a seminar on botanical illustration at the National Tropical Botanical Gardens. Her name is Wendy Hollender, and you can see her beautiful images or find her book Botanical Drawing in Color through this link, which will guide you through learning to correctly draw botanicals with colored pencil.