Happy Summer Solstice!

Prismacolor pencil on “Light Blue” Canson paper.

In this piece I used the paper color as the primary color for the artwork. The sky is the untouched paper color, and forms the water surface with white pencil over it for the foam and wave-splash, and some turquoise and light blue next to the figures. A thin strip of blue watercolor was run across horizontally for the distant ocean horizon. The figures were created with Prismacolor pencils on the blue paper. The paper color lends itself well to the cool tones in the shadowed parts of the figures; the “tooth” of the blue paper was allowed to show through the pencilwork in those areas. 

I specialize in working on colored papers. This is a good example of how the paper can be used to do much of the work of the piece. Everything except the figures was mostly created by the blue paper. The pencil colors used for the figures, being opposite of blue on the color wheel, really pop on that background color. 

I’m currently working on my first tutorial about using paper color for creating backgrounds, for colored pencil artists. 

“Hinies in the Surf”, 1989.

🎨  Prismacolor pencil on “Light Blue” Canson Mi-Teintes paper

18 x 26 inches