Colour Pencil Portraits

The first step is to superimpose a grid onto the photo using a PC. Although the true likeness is achieved later, a grid helps the artist retain correct proportions while enlarging the image. Using a grid does not guarantee complete accuracy, however, and a "good eye" is needed to avoid errors. Because our brains are programmed to recognise facial details, even the minutest error will stand out for the customer.

When the portrait has been tranferred onto the paper using a neutral colour pencil, work starts on the background. As well as providing an attractive backdrop, background colours and forms can help balance a composition. This background's details are largely unclear, which is ideal for a portrait because they compliment rather than detract from the main subject.

Colours are layered gradually to blend them. Although smudging may be used, the main technique is a criss-crossing of pencil lines. A colourless blender pencil is also available from art outlets (not used here) although once applied it can restrict further work (see blended colour portrait). Multiple colours are mixed rather than trying to lay down one colour at large. The top left corner of the picture used a total of 15 colours, which you may discern in the close-up above.

Colour pencil portraits are best worked on slightly textured paper to aid colour blending and depth. This one used a finegrain watercolour paper and soft artists' pencils from the Derwent Coloursoft range. These coloured pencils are soft and oily, but can also be sharpened to a fine point. The portrait was worked from the following photograph by shiver-stock.deviantart.com:

The Completed Coloured Pencil Portrait.

Click Here to see a colour pencil pet portrait in progress.

Click Here to see a greyscale children's pencil portrait in progress.

In this portrait, the girl's hair used no black but rather a heavily-applied mix of lichen green, indigo, brown-black, and loganberry with some strokes of ginger. Note also the range of colours in the shadows: from blue-greens to orangey-pinks. The colours of shadows depend in part on what casts them as well as what they are cast upon. Accurate rendering of shadows helps create a sense of luminescence in the finished portrait, and helps reproduce facial characteristics. A soft putty rubber gently applied takes off layers of pencil to produce convincing highlights, seen below on the cheek-bone, collar-bones and neck.

Some pencil artists choose to "burnish" the completed artwork with a colour-free burnishing pencil. This flattens the grain of the paper and removes traces of pencil strokes for a more polished effect. In this portrait, however, these slight textures have been left visible.

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