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It's the everyday splendor of the world we live in that inspires me to draw my horses, landscapes, and flowers using nothing more than colored pencil and eraser.
I love colored pencil for the wonderful control over shape and color it provides. It allows me to dive into the finest details or imply only few of them, but in any case the finished work always looks realistic. Although creating photorealistic art works is not my priority, I aim to capture my subject in its real beauty.
Often I don't go very far into details, but instead work with many layers of color all over the paper, adding new strokes everywhere I feel it is necessary until the drawing starts to look more like a painting. I add details later, when the whole art work is almost done. Photos and sketches serve me as a reference, and sometimes I use plenty of them for a single piece.
Usually I develop my drawings from light to dark, starting with light under-painting colors that later peek through darker colors and give my art works vibrancy and life.
When colors of big areas in both background and foreground are well defined, I turn to details. That's where the colored pencil comes really handy. Quite often I only add suggestions of details, but they can say a lot about the look of a horse or the mood of a landscape.
It's easier to start working in colored pencil than to stop, but when I feel that the drawing is breathing, I don't add anything to it.
I use a different approach for pastel pencil seldom developing a drawing into a painting. But still my tendency to realism shows here. I prefer colored paper for pastel pencil that allows color lines and spots to dance against the background.
My other mediums are China marker, ink, and oil pastel. And line drawing is of importance for me too, since line can be very expressive.
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Artist: John Treanor
