Janie Gildow: The Art of Colored Pencil – The Light Touch Janie Gildow

Janie Gildow is your guide to the rich and elegant art of colored pencil as you learn how to draw with colored pencil in this drawing instruction video, The Art of Colored Pencil: The Light Touc

Janie Gildow makes realism a challenge in her colored pencil art. While she takes liberties with composition and hue, the precise detail and dynamic shadows in her finished drawings create a lifelike image of her subjects. In this workshop, Janie shares the design, shading and blending techniques that help her meet the challenge of realism and make the apples in her still life glow.

This film employs and enhances the skills from Janie’s introductory colored pencil workshop. She starts her drawing with the Grisaille method, establishing values in the background elements but reserving the apples for a layer of pure color. As always, Janie demonstrates precision when coloring shadows. She layers complex darks and cuts away unwanted wax with an X-acto knife.

Turning to her subjects, Janie sketches indigo shadows then blends luscious colors to contour the fruit. She experiments with hue and takes the time to perfect her blends. The finished apples contain more than a dozen colors, each applied with Janie’s careful design instincts and delicate touch. The subtle transitions on the apples’ surface adds one of the most important elements of realism.

Janie shows great care in all phases of drawing. Her artistic process is often painstaking, but her experience as a teacher makes her methods accessible. Her workshop presents the medium in a concise format, helping you to understand the necessary techniques and design principles while viewing the key moments in Janie’s shading and coloring process.

By the time she returns to the background to darken the fabric and enhance edges in the straw mat, you’ll understand the colored pencil process from initial design to final detail. To take on the challenge of realism with an exciting, non-traditional medium, join Janie Gildow in The Art of Colored Pencil: The Light Touch.

Janie covers a few basics then jumps into a project and teaches you her process from design to completion. Janie Gildow, CPSA, shows her photo selection process, cropping to improve composition, use of a modified grisaille approach to establish values and then demonstrates how she layers color, often using four or more colors in an area for richness. Janie Gildow uses the ‘light touch’ for flexibility and elegance.

You will learn pointers to improve your own technique as she shares her thoughts about the process. Your view is so close you will see when Janie’s pencil point starts to dull! This workshop packs days of information into 90 minutes. A recent update from Janie on the pencils she uses: The name has been changed to Prismacolor Premiere “soft core” colored pencils–available in 132 colors. They’re made by Sanford now (instead of Berol) but they’re the same colors with the same numbers.

BONUS CLIP: Tinting Darks in Colored Pencil
In this clip from her DVD workshop, The Art of Colored Pencil: The Light Touch, Janie Gildow adds the first touches of color to the shadows in her still life composition. She shares tips on how to control pressure, adjust your grip, and evenly apply colors.