Cecile's incredibly rich, realistic, light-filled paintings. Her work captures the drama, beauty and simplicity of everyday objects--the color of a piece of fruit, the juicy texture of a melon slice, the texture of a basket, the shape of a teakettle. Every painting features the wondrous play of light, whether bouncing off an apple, shining through the petals of a rose, or dancing across ceramic surfaces.
Page by page and painting by painting, Cecile shares her secrets to creating the sophisticated, painterly look of oils with the ease (and affordability!) of colored pencils. Learn her straightforward techniques for drawing your viewer in with dramatic composition, adding depth and sparkle with an intriguing sense of light, and making your paintings practically jump right off the paper!
Get Ready...
Since every great painting starts with an idea, Cecile starts by showing you ways to turn everyday subjects into works of art--paintings that touch the viewer on an emotional level. You'll learn a few basics of composition and then experiment with different setups. You'll explore different lighting scenarios to set a mood and create the shadows and highlights that show off your subject to most dramatic effect.
Get Set... The basic techniques for creating luminous colored pencil paintings are simple, straightforward, and incredibly versatile. You'll learn how to:
* Layer! Layer! Layer! to create vibrant, lively color
* Master burnishing--the secret to deep, rich darks, brilliant color and a sense of light
* Use dramatic darks to enhance the lights
* Portray the color subtleties in your subject
* Add sparkle to any painting
Glow!
The bulk of this book is devoted to a series of over 20 step-by-step demonstrations in three subject-themed chapters. Follow along for radiant lifelike effects. Even you will be surprised what you can achieve with colored pencil! A Winner!
This book presents a wealth of information and painterly advice, but does so in a way that makes it quite easy to digest. The opening chapter, for instance, demonstrates the elements of composition by taking you through Cecile's thinking process as she creates the painting Shades of Green, adjusting elements, balance, perspective and the like until hitting upon the final composition.
Cecile's approach unleashes the full expressive potential of colored pencils to create work that defies the 'typical' expectations of the medium. Through the lessons in this book, you will learn how to achieve any look you want, whether soft like the impressionists' or detailed and realistic like the Old Masters'.
While Cecile's methods are not speedy, achieving a painterly look is not difficult and is no more time-consuming than oil painting. And there is, in the end, something magical about achieving this level of artistry from the humblest of subject and medium.
