Pet Portraits in Colored Pencil Workshop!

In just one week, I will be teaching a workshop on drawing portraits of your pet using colored pencil at the Community College of Beaver County.

Wednesdays, January 10th & 17th, from 6-9 PM

on the CCBC Monaca, PA campus.

This class is designed for beginners, and all you need to do is bring a photo of an animal you'd like to draw, a sketchbook, and a pack of colored pencils, and we'll take it from there!

You can find more details & register for the course here:

Register me for Pet Portraits in Colored Pencil!

I hope you'll join me for two relaxing evenings of sketching the animals you love!

Copyright Betsy Bangley 2024.

 I got a new set of Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils for the Pet Portraits in Colored Pencils class at the Community College of Beaver County.

One of the easiest ways to drop into creative mode, I find is to simply test out your new supplies by making a chart with the name of each color and a sample of that color. This process of swatching shows you exactly what color each pencil or paint type is.  

Now that you are familiar with your new supplies, ideas pop up for sketchbook projects.  In my case, the daylilies were blooming right off the front porch where I sat in the late afternoon sun.

I hope you'll try swatching your art supplies.  Perhaps you have some colored pencils or watercolors, or a set of markers.  Testing them out can be your entryway into creativity!

Portrait of a Kitten

I recently taught a Pet Portraits in Colored Pencil course at 

the Community College of Beaver County.  

As a demonstration, I used the photograph below to create the drawing above.

A high quality photograph is the best reference to have, so references like this Life magazine will give you a great start.  Because photos like this are copyrighted, you can't sell your resulting artworks, but they are very helpful to use when you are practicing.

I started with a graphite sketch, then erased most of the graphite marks, and began adding in the colors swatched along the left side of the drawing.

I started with the eyes, as I find that they are the most important feature in a portrait.  If you get the eyes right, and give the idea of the other facial features, with loose lines for the fur, 

the viewer's eye fills in the rest.

If you'd like to practice drawing animals from high quality photos, 

check out my Pet Portraits in Colored Pencil page here: 

https://betsyblissart.blogspot.com/p/pet-portraits-in-colored-pencil.html

I hope you have fun drawing these beautiful animal friends!

Pet Portraits Update

Following that quiet little voice of my intuition, I finished my drawing of my friend Brad's cat Sedona using wild colors and active lines.  

During last week's class, I invited my students to use toned paper. Below is a class demonstration I created using Strathmore Toned Tan drawing paper and Cezanne colored pencils.  The tan paper fills in the midtones, so you can focus on adding the light values, the darker values and a bit of color to quickly create a portrait!

If you are interested in taking a class with me, you can find the most updated list here: https://betsyblissart.blogspot.com/p/online-art-classes.html 

I hope to see you in a future class!

Pet Portraits in Colored Pencil: First Class

 

Tuesday night, we had our first session of "Pet Portraits in Colored Pencil" at the Community College of Beaver County.  The participants brought photos of their pets -- all cats in this case -- and we played with techniques for rendering our furry friends in color.  

My primary aim was to get everyone playing with their art materials, because we create our best work when we can take on the spirit of exploration and adventure.  We can listen to the tiny voice of our intuition, and make discoveries!

We explored gesture drawings to find the structure of our cat's form, and we played with colors -- complementary and analogous.

When I mentioned my colorist bent, and showed the power of adding unexpected colors, several folks took on the adventure of rendering their cats in vibrant hues.  It was a collaboration of the best sort, and everyone came away with a beautiful, expressive drawing of their cat.

The drawings above are my demonstration pieces. I drew from a photo my friend Brad Silberberg took of his cat, Sedona, Arizona.  You can see the reference photo here.