Guest Author - Elsa Neal

Cecile Baird is a talented artist who specialises in photorealistic drawings in coloured pencil. She manages to create a translucency to her drawings, and it is this technique that she shares in this book.

Painting Light with Colored Pencil is a large, nearly square, hardcover book, filled with graphics of Cecile’s art and composition photographs, and on its looks alone would make a beautiful addition to a coffee table collection. But Cecile’s advice on everything from the type of pencils and paper or film to use for the best results to blending with solvents and getting rid of wax bloom, and her step-by-step demonstrations of the techniques she uses to achieve the look of her artwork, will also make this a much-referenced addition to any artist’s bookshelf.

Cecile begins with the usual information about composition and lighting your subject, and selecting your subject based on your interest in exploring the colours, shapes, and textures it presents. Cecile admits to being inspired by still life subjects, fruit in particular, which is not my favourite inspiration, but I did find Cecile’s interpretation of various items and compositions interesting. The beautiful artwork she produces from these simple subjects are certainly inspiring, and I may have to explore some of her ideas. Her detailed instructions are good, and she provides the specific shades of pencil to use, and how thickly or thinly to apply each, to practice the demonstration painting and measure your results.

Cecile prefers oil or wax based pencils to water soluble pencils and recommends Prismacolor by Sanford because of their softness and rich application. She also advises investing in a range of as many different shades as possible, as many of her techniques involve layering these multiple tones on top of each other and blending to achieve the glow of light or the metallic gleam of certain subjects.

Before I picked up this book, I hadn’t really considered producing “serious” artwork using coloured pencils. Like crayons, they seem to belong to my past school days rather than being allowed to occupy a position next to the acrylics and watercolours I prefer to use now. Painting Light with Colored Pencil is a real eye-opener as to what can be achieved with this underused medium, and I’m excited about digging out my box of pencils and giving it a try.

Cecile Baird is a member of the Colored Pencil Society of America. Her website is at CecileBairdArt.com. You can view one of her award-winning drawings here: Juicy Fruit by Cecile Baird.

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Painting Light with Colored Pencil by Cecile Baird is available from Amazon.com

You may also like to pick up a good set of coloured pencils to practice with. Amazon also has good savings on this set of 120 Sanford Prismacolor coloured pencils. These are the brand recommended in the book.