New Colored Pencils and Blending Tests

Exciting news!  I bought my first set of colored pencils today (at least ones that didn’t say Crayola on them)!  Before I started using them, though, I wanted to see what they would look like when blended with each other.  Recently, I learned about color charts from artist Cathy Shapiro (you can find her blog here).  So, taking a page from her book, I decide to create my own color charts by blending each colored pencil with the rest of the colors in the set (a basic set of 24).

First, I drew out a grid of squares 1 cm by 1 cm.  Then, I wrote the name of each color across the columns and then again down along the rows.  I started with each column and shaded each square with the corresponding color at the top of the column.

Colored Pencils Color Chart

When that was finished, I went back and shaded a second color over each square corresponding to the color at the start of each row.  This ultimately led to a total of 576 colored squares, of which 24 represented the original colors of the pencils, while the rest represented a blended combination of two of the pencils.  For each blended combination, there were two examples: one which showed the first color blended over top of the second color, and one with the opposite blending order.

Even though it’s just a simple study in color blending, I think the final product is pretty in and of itself!  This is going to be SO incredibly helpful now as I look at using these pencils to color in some of my sketches.  We’ll see how it turns out!

Keep Drawing!