Treehouse - Many Months in the Making
-
Hey all! My entry for the April treehouse prompt originally started way back in October (at that time I didn't even know what SVS was). I was completing a mentorship with Kate Pellerin who gave me the challenge of illustrating a cover with the title "I Saw a Witch"
So here's the visual story of how this piece came to be, I hope you enjoy seeing it!
^these were the thumbnails and cleaned up sketches I did for that project
I had completed a rendered version of one of the ideas^ but then we started talking about my main character being in a treehouse.In between then and now I started working on other pieces and left these characters alone for a while.
But then I saw this month's prompt, so...
I hope you enjoyed seeing this journey! I don't intend for this to be the last of Whiskerson Witch, Livvy and the Burglar Bats
-
@Kristen-Lango Yes, I enjoyed it very much. I love seeing the process behind work and thanks for showing all the stages. It is great to see what went on behind the scenes. What pencils did you use, and what paper do you recommend? I always felt insecure working in pencil but after seeing your work and others pencil work here, I feel much better! Thanks for the inspiration Kristen. I have one piece of advice, I would make the type a bit smaller as it is close to the edge of the tree.
-
@Kristen-Lango it’s colourful and alive Kristen. Your process is great. I too love your coloured pencils and agree the first letter in the text needs to move away from the tree! What brand are the pencils, they have great colour depth.
Cheers
Helen -
@Helen Great minds think alike!
-
@PenAndrew they do indeed
-
@PenAndrew So glad to hear it! I always wanted to see how other artists create things, so I never like to be cryptic about how I've made something. I'm glad you found it useful!
I use fabriano water color pencils to lay down the first layer of color and then I go in with layering prismacolor pencils pretty heavily (and that takes a whiiiile haha)
I totally know how you feel about being insecure with pencil work. I think for me, I've gotten past those insecurities with layering - sounds simple but it can be tricky to force yourself to add more to a piece when you feel like it's not turning out well.
You're so welcome
and thank you for that advice! I totally agree about the type being too big - I played with it for way too long haha I don't consider myself a calligrapher and I generally feel like I don't know what I'm doing with type at all - do you know if there is a class on type in SVS? There must be. -
@Helen Thanks so much Helen! I really appreciate it
definitely I need to adjust that type. And they're first fabriano watercolor pencils (I also have a couple special color faber castell watercolor pencils that I throw in there too) and then layering prismacolor premiers on top of that 
You can find the set of 24 I use here: fabriano pencils
-
@Kristen-Lango I have not seen a class on type. I recently bought some Prismacolour premiere pencils but have not used them, one of the art students at my University uses pencils and does amazing work, I asked him which did he think was better- Faber Castell , as I had inherited a box and Prismacolor and he reckoned Faber Castell, so I have been using the latter until I can get around to seeing the advantages of prismacolour. They almost seem like they are oil based, and so I imagine they have to be used in a particular way.
-
@Kristen-Lango I wonder if you have considered creating a background layer of colour separately, and then separate drawings of the house and Witch? In this way you could manipulate them more in the image. It is just a thought and an idea that was recommended to me by an illustrator, it gives the artist a lot more freedom to manipulate things. When I did my first image of a robot I drew each part separately on different layers, which allowed me to move it around and even copy and paste and flip the parts of the image. Maybe, like me you are looking to find a happy medium between digital and traditional?
-
@PenAndrew I’m a colored pencil artist and if you have questions I’d gladly share what I’ve learned along the way. I use Polychromos, luminance, lightfast, Pablo’s and started with prismacolors.
-
@AngelinaKizz Yes! Thanks and yes I know you are an expert with pencils, your treehouse shows that as well as your amazing portraits. Thanks for being open to share. I did buy some prismacolour premier but I am not sure what to do with them, as they are oil based and I think have only used wax based pencils like Derwent, Faber Castell, Caran-Dache pencils. I think I saw the post about Polychromos pencils a couple of weeks after I bought my new set!
I thought prismacolour were the best but now I see there's a whole confusing world of pencils out there. My courses never even taught that there are wax based and oil based pencils. I have never learnt anything about pencils at University or college! -
@PenAndrew
Prismacolors are a wax based pencil, as well as luminance, but Polychromos and Derwent Lightfast are oil based. The difference in use, doesn’t really vary. The one thing I notice with oil based, is that there’s less chance of wax bloom (a white filmy layer that shows up over time and dulls your work). Polychromos is a very sturdy core. If you drop a Polychromos, there’s a very negligible chance that the core will break (if you drop a Prismacolors, it will likely shatter inside the pencil and fall apart as you sharpen it). Polys hold a really beautiful point for much longer than any of my other pencils, so they’re wonderful for doing highly detailed work. Lightfast are oil, but they’re creamier in texture to use. The colors have all been tested to the highest lightfast rating and have been tested to last over 100 years without fading, Their color spectrum is slightly different (I find the brighter spectrum colors to be slightly more muted, but they have talked about their colors having to be tweaked to earn the lightfast rating… they didn’t come out with a blue for at least a year after the first batch of 32 pencils came out). Luminance is the cream of the crop for a wax based pencil. They’re creamy, they lay down so beautifully and whatever their color formula magic is, I find they have a glow to them. I love them the most for portraiture. They’re also the highest lightfast rated wax pencil. That being said, I will do plenty of portraits using Polychromos and Lightfast, it just depends on the details I need to achieve. Or I will mix them, I’ll use luminance for the skin tones, and Polychromos/Lightfast for the hair and clothing.Prismas have lost my business. I started with prismas, and loved them very much. They had a beautiful color spectrum, they layered beautifully, they had decent lightfast ratings, the price was on the more affordable spectrum and they were enjoyable to use. They were purchased by Rubbermaid (I think 5 years ago) and the manufacturing changed. Since Rubbermaid took them over, they just aren’t reliable quality wise. The pencils are hit or miss to having a centred core (if the core is off center they’re awful to sharpen). I bought open stock and struggled to find pencils that weren’t cracked up the wood shaft. They break like crazy. I had one that I sharpened right down to a stub before I even drew with it, so may as well have just thrown my money in the garbage. If you can get decent pencils out of your set, absolutely use them. I just couldn’t keep buying them. And I think that’s where most will say “I prefer these over those”.
Pencils are totally a personal preference and there’s no “ you have to use these to be a successful artist”. I’ve seen incredible work out of Crayola … you just have to love working with your pencil of choice. I do choose the higher priced brands as they have higher lightfast ratings and that bodes well for selling artwork.
When it comes to oil vs wax… the method of use isn’t really different. Mixing them in layers though, they can fight a bit. When you go to burnish all wax, or all oil, they sink beautifully into the paper. If you go to burnish over a mix of wax and oil, the oil tends to not move into the tooth of the paper with the wax. So I would say just try to keep them separate unless you want that oil to stay textured,
-
@AngelinaKizz Wow thank you so much Angelina for this run down on things! Even though I've been using my primsacolors steadily for a year now, I still don't feel like I know about the other colored pencil options that exist, so thank you for all this wonderful info!
Also, yes I can totally see what you're talking about with the quality decrease. I remember using prismas years ago and they were definitely of a higher caliber than what they are now.
-
Also does anyone have any thoughts on the Rembrandt polycolor colored pencils or the Staedtlers? I've got some of both that I mainly use for thumbnails.
-
@AngelinaKizz Thanks Angelina, a really detailed and helpful analysis of the market and products. What do you mean by burnish? I know this to mean something like heating and rubbing metal onto a surface.
-
@PenAndrew burnishing is when you go with a heavier hand as one of the last layers to push all of the layers into the tooth of the paper. It marries all the layers of colors together. It’s not necessary to burnish but I like the end result of burnishing. There’s not a whole lot of room for adding more layers after burnishing but I can usually add little hairs, and deepen a wrinkle or creases.
-
@AngelinaKizz Thanks! I am so shocked to realise how ignorant I am about many things, there are so many holes in my knowledge. The more I learn about pencils the more i understand why I thought using them wasn't valued, because I just didn't know enough. I can't believed I have used pencils for so long. I honestly didn't know that there was anything to learn about them!
-
@PenAndrew I think that’s the best part of art… there’s always something to learn. If we stop learning, we’re either much too arrogant or dead. Haha.
-
@AngelinaKizz Yes, it has been the path to my reawakening of art! Despite my 7 years of studying art I saw how ignorant I was after listening to the 100 podcasts, I joined up just after this. What are you studying at University?
-
@PenAndrew I’m going to Emily Carr in Canada, they have an illustration program. I’m really enjoying it so far.
