Becca’s Cross Stitch

I’ve done some more on my leopard coloured pencil drawing.  I’m not sure if it’s finished or not, i’ll leave it for now and see what I think later.  I used prismacolor pencils on black paper.

This is not cross stitch, but a drawing of a leopard i’m working on using coloured pencils on black paper.  Hopefully i’ll get it finished soon.  I’m working on my HAED, The Awakening over half term too so i’ll show you a picture of that soon.

I went on holiday for a couple of nights with my boyfriend to a lovely place near Bath.  As it was a holiday i thought i’d better take my holiday cross stitch project with me - Max’s Moon.  I got chance to work on him a bit, and i’ve done some more since i got back too because i just can’t put him down.  He’s looking really cute now, although stitching black thread on black fabric isn’t very fun.

This is my latest coloured pencil piece, done on black paper with my Prismacolor pencils. I found the photo of the tiger cub and thought it was so cute i just had to draw it! I’m pleased with the way it’s turned out, although the wood was a bit tricky as i had never tried to draw wood before.

This is the first piece i did after i bought my set of Prismacolor pencils.  I decided to go for the set of 72 as that probably included all the colours i could ever want, and was very good value.  Unfortunately these pencils aren’t actually available in the UK, but i managed to find them on Ebay at a reasonable price, and decided to get them as i’d heard so many good things about them.  They were even better than i expected, the colour is bright, and lays down smoothly on the paper.  They also blend together really well when layered.

I really enjoyed experimenting with my new pencils on this piece, and i’m pleased with how it came out for a first attempt.  I knew i still had a lot to learn, especially as far as fur was concerned, and techniques for creating areas of light and dark.  The whiskers i added on at the end, by painting them on with white gouache, after discovering that the white pencil would not colour over the darker colours of the fur.  I know this is not my best work, but i find it helpful to see the past pieces of work of an artist to see how they have improved, so hopefully this will be helpful to someone else.

This black cat is my latest coloured pencil piece. I’d seen a lot of coloured pencil artists use black paper and their work looked really good on it, so i thought i’d give it a go. I bought a black Winsor and Newton sketch book and decided black paper would be perfect for a black cat. I was really pleased with the way the colour went on the paper, and could instantly see that this paper is much better quality than the white paper i have (so i might have to go and get a new white sketch pad too!) I’m really pleased with the cat, especially the nose and the eye.

On a side note, i recently bought a book called Realistic Pet Portraits In Coloured Pencil, by Anne DeMillie Flood. This book is really useful, it concentrates entirely on coloured pencil, and has many step by step instructions for drawing cats, dogs, horses and birds, as well as pages on smaller animals like rabbits. I was really pleased to see she uses Prismacolor pencils, which are the same brand i use, so it was even more helpful as she gives details of the exact colours she uses. It also has sections on how to draw specific features such as eyes and noses, as well as instructions on how to draw different types of fur. I’d really reccommend this book to anyone interested in animals and coloured pencil.