Blending Backgrounds with Powder Blender
Blending backgrounds with powder blender can be faster and easier than drawing blurred backgrounds with traditional drawing methods.
Drawing Rich Black Backgrounds
Read about four ways of drawing rich black backgrounds with colored pencils and start drawing better backgrounds for your next project.
Is there a Benefit to Starting with the Subject?
When you use colored pencils, is there a benefit to starting with the subject of each drawing, instead of starting with the background?
How to Get Dark Backgrounds with Colored Pencils
Do you want to draw dark backgrounds with colored pencils or for your colored pencil art? CP artist Carrie Lewis shares a few ideas.
How to Decide Background Colors for Portraits
Colored pencil and portrait artist Carrie L. Lewis shares tips to help you decide background colors for colored pencil portraits.
How to Draw a Blurred Background
Blurred backgrounds can add just the right touch to a portrait, but they can also be difficult. Carrie shows how to draw a blurry background.
How to Draw a Blurry Background
Today’s subject is how to draw a blurry background. Here is the reader question. I would like to know how muted backgrounds are done. It’s where all the background looks like it’s melted. No specific item is clear. Please help. I am understanding the question to refer to soft focus, …
How to Draw Dark Backgrounds
Let’s talk about one of the easier ways I know to draw dark backgrounds with colored pencils. You’ve heard me talk about emphasizing your subject by creating contrast between the subject and the things around it. The sample for that article was a yellow flag, which I showed against a …
Fast and Easy Backgrounds for Colored Pencil Drawings
Looking for fast and easy backgrounds for colored pencil drawings? Carrie shares three methods for creating unique backgrounds with watercolor pencils.
Making Dark Backgrounds with Watercolor Pencils
This post continues a series on making dark backgrounds for colored pencil work. We’ve already looked at simply drawing the background or drawing on black or dark papers. The most recent post on the subject was about using India ink to under paint a dark background. So it’s time to …
