Product Review

Many people who bought colored pencils during the adult coloring book craze are now looking to learn new ways to be creative with them.

In Mastering Colored Pencil, artist and colored pencil evangelist Lisa Dinhofer presents everything artists need to know about traditional and contemporary drawing techniques, materials, and color theory in order to master this versatile medium.

Colored pencils, an inexpensive, easy to use, and mobile medium, are coming of age. More and more artists are discovering the incredible qualities of drawing with colored pencils. The wide variety of vibrant color choices among the major manufacturers seems endless. At a recent count, there are more than fifty different reds in the colored pencil spectrum of Prismacolor, Faber-Castell, and Derwent. The base of the pencils vary as well: wax, watercolor, pastel, and graphite. These can be interchanged or mixed together. The effects that can be achieved are limitless. A work in pencil can be a drawing, a watercolor, or an oil painting. A wax pencil can sketch, can draw, can paint. A watercolor pencil can do the same. The drawing can be transparent as a loose wash or as dense as an oil on canvas. Artists can work as small as a postage stamp or as large as a wall.

Mastering Colored Pencil is illustrated throughout with Dinhofer’s fresh and sophisticated artwork and includes more than twenty-five step-by-step demonstrations, thoughtful exercises, workbook templates, and specific assignments that are sure to help every artist achieve striking results with pencils. A special exhibition section includes work, technique descriptions, and insights from seven additional contemporary artists.