I think the shading and color overall turned out pretty well. It's all about working in layers of colors, much like the way I shade in a grayscale pencil drawing. I learned a technique a while back of coloring in a pencil drawing with markers, then doing the shading and highlighting with colored pencils. I've only done it a handful of times, though I've had cool results. I don't know why, but I've always been a little afraid of color in my drawings. And oil paint just scares the crap out of me. It seems so permanent. That's one of the reasons I like to work in clay. It's a very forgiving medium. But, I digress...
So using this technique, I'll work from my lightest to darkest colors in sketch lines, finishing the first phase by blending with a blending stick. Then I start the whole process all over, concentrating on filling in the white divets in the color, created by the grain of the paper, as well as filling in "missing strokes" where the previous color's lines didn't touch. I love the effect this produces and have used it while painting some of my clay pieces, too.
I've discovered if I take the lightest tone (a whitish pink or whitish yellow or whitish blue, etc.) of an area and cover
where it's already saturated with that hue of colored pencil, it starts to actually blend the colors together, leaving the highlights and shading intact. It's pretty sweet and gives a really cool effect, but it does take a lot of time since there are so many colors involved in each layer.
I've only ever taken a pic of one other thing I did with color pencils and that was on black paper. It's my big-headed skull. Check it.All in all, I would say I'm pretty pleased with the results from my latest color endeavor. Hope this info is helpful to someone, somewhere, delving into the world of blending with color pencils.
