Part of my homework for Level 3 Art and Design is to work on color finding. Mainly, I am supposed to do this with colored pencil but I’m using other media as well. I take something from nature and then try to replicate the exact color with layers of colored pencil. I find this exercise quite a challenge.

Here are four that I did in class. It’s really hard to get the correct color let alone the right value. And there are so many different greens to choose from.

So on my daily walks, I pick up something small to sketch and to find the colors. This one is a tamarack pine. It’s a pine tree that loses its needles in the fall, they turn a golden, almost yellow orange color in the fall and then drop off. While I was visiting New York City, I visited a small shop called CW Pencils. It was a delightful shop and I purchased some water soluble graphite pencils, a stub holder and a pencil sharpener. The sketch of the tamarack is done with water soluble graphite pencil. I did add a bit of water to the stem but left the needles alone.

The next try was lichen on a small branch. It’s hard to see the colors on this one but they were pretty close. It’s just there is so much darkness in between the little lichen bits it’s hard to see. I did the sketch with sepia pen and white colored pencil. This was about filling in the negative space with the dark background and leaving the lighter spaces with just a little bit of color.

And this is the one I did this morning. It is done with permanent ink pen and water color. I am really enjoying getting back into a better habit of sketching and finding color in nature. I’m also working on circles and octagons but I’ll show those next time. Have a great weekend!