About Pet Portraits in Color Pencil
Coloured pencils for creating pet portraits, or using coloured pencils full stop are a relatively new medium in the scheme of things. As many of you will remember we all use to use coloured pencils as children and in my personal experience I wanted to move on to felt tips as soon as possible as i wanted to get as close to paint and realism as i possibly could from an early age.
However in process of learning new mediums at art college, i became open to all mediums and felt they were perfect for pet portraits. I found that coloured pencil was the perfect medium to render all animals including dogs, cats and horses. Using the correct techniques and keeping your pencils sharp you can create very subtle details from fine fur to delicate detail in the eyes and nose which is one of the most important areas on a pet portrait.
There are many different brands of coloured pencils on the market and they are developing new pencils each year. The newest on the market are Derwent coloursoft pencils and the feed back i have had from some of my pet portrait artist freinds, is that they are really pleased with their results.
You can use coloured pencils on many different types and brands of paper, my favoruite for my pet portrait work is fabriano hot press as this doesn't have much tooth, but it has just enough to grip the pencil. I have found that shiny papers don't really work, as you don't seem to be able to layer your colours very well. Try to experiment and find a paper that suits your style of working and different papers can work better for different artists, just like brands of pencils.
I like to keep my pencils sharp while working so that i can create fine fur detail and i tend to sharpen them with a scalpel as a sharpener can waste much of the pencil trying to get a fine point.
I think my best advice for anyone starting using coloured pencils for animal portraits is to start off slowly, build your colours gradually and dont press too hard!
