CP Magic magazine September 2026 is fresh off the press. Let’s take a look at what you can find between the covers.
CP Magic Magazine September 2026
Founder and publisher Carrie Lewis is the featured artist. She joined Kim Vlahovich to chat about her life as an equine portrait artist, blogger, teacher, and publisher. Read about her education, introduction to colored pencils, and why she chose to begin publishing a monthly magazine.
Carrie’s tutorial is a mini-tutorial featuring a cat’s eye, for which Carrie drew the eye as viewed in profile. She also included tips for drawing deep color and rich details on textured paper. She used Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils on Pastelmat paper, but you can successfully complete this mini-tutorial with your favorite paper-pencil combination.
Prefer print? Get it here.
Also in This Issue
The September issue also includes four articles to help you improve your artwork, or the way you create.
Technical Articles
In Effective Shading Techniques: Textured Paper, Carrie shares shading techniques on textured papers. Her tips are based on all of the drawings for which she has used textured paper. While most of her work has been on Pastelmat, these tips also work on other textured papers such as UArt Premium Pastel Paper, Canson Mi-Teintes Touch, and other similar papers. Hint: Effective shading on textured papers is not as difficult as you might think!
Carrie’s second article for September is More Ways to Make Your Art Look More Professional. This is a followup to the August article in which she talked about making artwork look better. That article was written more for beginners; this followup article is more in-depth, for artists at all levels.
Review Articles
Kim Vlahovich continues the series of paper review articles with a review of Bienfang Bristol Vellum paper. Kim readily admits that this paper is one of his favorite papers, but his review is honest, sharing both the advantages and disadvantages of using this very smooth paper.
He also offers a review of light pads in general, what they are and how they can be useful to artists of all types. As a bonus, he shares a mini-tutorial showing you how to use a light pad to create line drawings from printed reference photos. Additional bonus: The tutorial includes two methods!
The Reader’s Gallery is Back!
The Reader’s Gallery has been absent the last several months. This month, it returns.
If you’re thinking about submitting a recent finished artwork, check out the details here.
Don’t forget that if you buy 10 or more issues mix and match,
you save 20% off the cover price with the discount code cpmagicdiscount2 at checkout.
