Let’s draw

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ Understand the use of cool and warm colours

■ Work with simple perspective

■ Easy mark-making exercises to follow

So far in this monthly drawing series, we have been using graphite pencils. Now we introduce the concept of colour into our drawings with coloured pencils. A basic set of 12 pencils in the brand of your choice will be sufficient for all our exercises. In forthcoming issues, we will explore water-soluble coloured pencils so if you do not wish to buy a set of both coloured and water-soluble pencils, just buy the water-soluble version. This month, as well as in July and August, we achieve a coloured-pencil effect simply by not adding water to the pencil marks.

Warm and cool colours

In any set of coloured pencils, there will be a range of warm and cool colours. In basic colour theory, yellow, orange, red, crimson and brown are warm colours, whereas purple, blue, green, and black are cool. The temperature of colours is useful in creating three-dimensional form as warm colours tend to advance and cool colours recede. Therefore, we can concentrate warm colours in foreground areas and use mostly cool colours in the background.

In the following demonstration, even though the tree has generally