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Title: Creative Colored Pencil Workshop: Exercises for Combining Colored Pencils with Your Favorite Mediums
ISBN: 1581808186
Author:
Carlynne Hershberger
Kelli Money Huff
Publicate Date: 2007-04-26
Publish: 2007-04-26
List Price: $29.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Spiral-bound
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $7.39
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $6.65
Amazon Merchant Price: $21.89
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| Customer Review: |
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1: It is okay
It is okay. It has a lot in it but it has not given me what I wanted. I like the way Ann Kullberg illustrates her books. She doesn't have mixed media but with colored pencil in itself she makes it very visible in what to do. This book is a good book but not as exciting as some others.
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2: Entering a competitive field
I was disappointed in this book for two reasons. Firstly the mixed media exercises use other mediums more as underpainting than as combinations with colored pencil to create new effects. By comparison, see Mary Todd Beam's demonstrations with colored pencil in mixed media in "Celebrate Your Creative Self." The results from Hershberger and Huff still look like colored pencil, not mixed media. In my view, this means it misses out as a mixed media book. How does it fare, then, as a colored pencil book?
I find the end results of the exercises in this book rather flat compared to works by established colored pencil artists, and this is my second reason. The book begins with some promising ideas, but adding other mediums should enhance, not muddy the result as I feel they do here.
The colored pencial medium has burgeoned into an extremely professional field in the last ten years or so, and this makes it a highly competitive market where new publications are concerned. The authors of this book have hard acts to follow, and this inevitably affects any assessment of its merits. The competition includes artist/instructors like Cecile Baird, Bet Borgeson and particularly Ann Kullberg, arguably the best of all colored pencil artists.
In fact, on Kullberg's website, even unsuccessful entries in her 2007 juried competition have a "zing' that is somehow missing in the illustrations in this book. The explanation that clarity is inevitably lost in simplifying the step-by-step lessons may be fair enough, but I suggest you compare these instructions with those on the Kullberg website. Although using colored pencil alone, Kulberg's exercises nevertheless achieve radiant, light-filled results.
Perhaps minor quibbles, but the exercises are not numbered (for easy reference) and the number is incorrectly given as 52 in the subtitle on the cover.
'Creative Colored Pencil Workshop'is beautifully bound and the authors undoubtedly convey a passion for their medium, but I find that the book comes nowhere near the high standard of books by the artist/authors mentioned above. For the higher price, I really expected something more.
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3: Beautiful Illustrations
Beautiful paintings by the authors and other artists strike a nice balance between a how-to book and a must-have for sheer enjoyment. I uploaded two images so you could see into the book.
Herschberger and Huff share their expertise on an expansive range of materials making this an excellent entry point for beginners and great fun for experimental artists. In one demonstration, or technically two I guess, they both paint from the same reference photo, but make entirely different painting choices. Witty humor highlights their rapport as the two artists work together and play off one another.
I particularly liked the silver leaf demonstration and how it was used in a realistic, not decorative, painting. Can't wait to try that!
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4: Eye Opener
I always thought colored pencils were for the grandkids. Wow, I read the entire book in one sitting and I can't wait to try some of the new ways of using not only colored pencils, but other media. Thank you to the authors for opening my eyes to new things.
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