Alyona Nickelsen
is a contributing writer for Colored Pencil Magazine and the author of Colored Pencil Painting Bible and Colored Pencil Painting Portraits: Master a Revolutionary Method for Rendering Depth and Imitating Life. She has exhibited widely and won many awards. www.brushandpencil.com
As a painter at heart and a natural control freak I want to enjoy the spontaneity, fast application and the ability to develop values from dark to light and vice versa that is offered by paints. At the same time, I do not want to give up the precision, control and absence of extended drying times that are the hallmarks of coloured pencil.
Coloured pencil artists accept the medium is slow and tedious, they preserve the white of the paper for the brightest highlights; they gradually darken values to develop shape; and are aware that the number of layers is limited by the properties of the working surface, etc – none of which suited me well, so I began looking outside the box to remedy the situation.