Coloured pencil portraits
Cyan magenta yellow & black palettes
In this new five-part series, JAKE SPICER will be exploring a series of approaches to drawing a portrait in coloured pencil, using a range of different colour palettes and processes
I, I’m looking at how to get the widest colour scheme from just four coloured pencils: CMYK, or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. First of all, we must draw a distinction between colour palettes and colour schemes. In a coloured pencil drawing, the palette describes the starting pencils we select from our tin, analogous of the tube colours we might squeeze onto a palette in a painting. The colour scheme describes the expression of those colours in the work itself. In the portrait here, I’ve used a limited palette of just four coloured pencils, but the huge range of colours created by their combination has resulted in a colour scheme that is anything but limited.
Bright coloured pencils can be subject to rapid fading, so I’ve used Derwent Lightfast coloured pencils to ensure the longevity of the drawing.
Whatever range you’re using, your rst task will be to select the ideal CMYK-equivalent colours – these are essentially equivalent to the colours used by an inkjet printer. Both coloured pencil names and the painted barrels of the coloured pencils can be a distraction from the exact colour properties of the pencil you are selecting, so focus on the tips of the pencils and how they appear on the paper when you make your selection. You will want to pick the most saturated and intense Magenta you can nd – not too red, not too purple; a Cyan of a light, saturated blue hue which nudges further towards green than purple, and a bright, dead-centre Yellow that is neither orange- nor green-tinged. Test how they mix by making a little colour triangle with a colour at each corner and mix reds, green and purples. Pick out a neutral black and you’re ready to get started. ▸
In coloured pencil drawings we mix our colours on the paper. There are lots of different techniques for encouraging the colours you lay down on the page to mix together and in this drawing, I’ve opted for a dry blending approach, avoiding solvents in favour of a blender pencil with a colourless core. Rubbing the blender pencil over a gradient of colour will help to bring out the full properties of that colour, as the pigment is smoothed into a transparent layer on the white paper. You can also use the blender pencil to smooth the transition between two colours.
You can make a CMYK portrait without blending the colours but the palette lends itself well to blending. Running your blender pencil over the top of the three colours reminds me of the children’s magic colouring books, where brushing clean water over the page spontaneously creates colour from nowhere. Using the blender pencil selectively and rmly across the drawing will spread pigment over the page, allowing the white of the paper to shine through and revealing intense and surprising colour combinations as hues mix beneath the blender’s tip.