Orange is never just Orange

We've started something in drawing class I've been wanting to get into for some time; color pencils. I've had a set of Prisma Color Pencils for several years now, in all my attempts to use them in the past were mediocre at best. There's a lot this semester that has been cliquing with various art techniques that never connected before, and using color pencils is one of them.

Before we officially started them in class I did a practice still life of a rubber duck, not only to practice the pencils but just trying make myself draw more and not just when it's required for school.




(Please forgive the lousy quality of the photo above, and the next picture, as both were taken with my cell phone.) The above I did before class. I think I did alright on the little guy. The cast shadow really needs help. We did oil pastels in Drawing II, however that was a year and a half ago I took that class and I had forgotten what she said concerning them. I do believe I got them down for our first assignment, a chili pepper.

Knowing we were doing peppers, thinking they were going to be the red kind of chilis, I brought in a green sheet of Canson paper. Upon discovering the peppers were also green, I was skeptical at how well I'd be make it really pop off the page. I think it worked quite well at any rate. Out next assignment though would be the peppers I was thinking of, the beautiful bell peppers, red, yellow, orange. Doing this study I realized an orange pepper is never just orange. Fiery autumn hues of all kind are needed to present the allusion of orange. That's when it came to me, that's where I failed in my color pencil attempts in the past. I was reverting back to my childhood coloring ways where red apples really were just red. It's not so, the red is a lie, it's so much more than that. So it is with this new found realization I will take into consideration with the rest of my colored creations.