The Journey from Oils to Colored Pencils

Today’s question is about my journey from oils to colored pencils. I’ve talked a little bit about that in a couple of previous posts, here, here, and here. But this reader posed the question in a different way.

Here’s the question.

I first discovered you on EmptyEasel when I began my own journey as an oil painter, and your posts were of tremendous help to me. After spending several years working with oils, I eventually discovered the world of colored pencils. I know you also transitioned from oil painting to colored pencil work, and I’m curious to hear more about your experience. What motivated you to make this switch? Was it the desire for a new creative challenge, an exploration of different techniques, or something more personal?

The Journey from Oils to Colored Pencils

I was an oil painter for a couple of decades when I first started dabbling with colored pencils. The oldest colored pencil pieces I’ve been able to find record of were from 1983. I’m sure there were a few pieces before 1983, but I apparently didn’t photograph them.

I believe I first picked colored pencils up after seeing the work of Vickie Lawrence, who worked in colored pencil. That must have been in the late 70s or early 80s and even then, she was drawing horses in landscapes. (I still have a 35mm print of one of her drawings around here somewhere.)

The point is that I liked what she was doing so much that I was inspired to see what I could do.

Colored pencils weren’t intended as a replacement for oils. Back then, I thought I’d be an oil painter until my dying day. Interesting, isn’t it, how things change?

My Motivation in Using Colored Pencils

After I saw that I could produce decent artwork with colored pencils, I decided to add them to my portfolio. That gave clients and potential clients two options for portrait work and that seemed like a good idea.

Colored pencil portraits did sell, too. Probably because I was pricing them below oil portraits, but also because they were different. I did several small pieces and some larger pieces, including a couple of full-sheet pieces (approximately 22 x 30).

In the early 2000s, I did the largest colored pencil portrait I’ve ever done. It was on a full sheet of matboard, though the actual artwork wasn’t that large.

(I look back on this piece fondly now, but it was a struggle to complete. I had to start it over from scratch after making an unrecoverable error on the first version.)

Why I Eventually Gave Up Oils

There were three main factors in my decision to give up oils altogether.

Convenience

One was convenience. It was getting more and more difficult to work standing at an easel. Standing was a lot better than sitting on the floor with my painting in front of me (which is what I used to do). But it was still difficult to stand in one place for long periods of time.

I did walk around the house periodically to take breaks and rest my feet. That helped, but didn’t resolve the issue.

Drying time was another factor. When I was painting, I was also working outside the home. The job was only part-time, but it still made some days unavailable for painting. That meant I had to paint when I could and if a painting was still too wet to work on, I had to either work on something else or not paint.

Cats

I would probably have continued working in oils even despite that if it hadn’t also been for the cats. They do like to help out, after all. They also like to explore. Wet paintings drying on a standing easel were an open invitation to mischief.

Even the paintings I hung on a wall to dry were fair game.

I never actually had any encounters between cats and paintings, but there were some cat-palette problems that hastened my decision.

Travel

The third (and official) reason for the journey from oils to colored pencils was horse shows. We were close enough to a major arena that we could attend a horse show every two or three weeks year-round. Most breeds and most disciplines. It was a dream come true.

But I wanted to work on something while at a horse show, because things aren’t always busy. People also like to see an artist working. I tried taking an oil painting a time or two, but that didn’t work out. For one thing, horses mean dust and dust on wet paint might add a touch of authenticity, but was unwanted nevertheless.

Even if there wasn’t dust, there was the danger of damaging wet paint in transporting it back home. Something different was needed.

Enter colored pencils.

The Journey from Oils to Colored Pencils

The bottom line is that I wasn’t looking for new creative challenges when I switched from oils to colored pencils. I was just looking for a way to continue drawing horses that fit into the rest of my life. I haven’t regretted the decision to add colored pencils to my portfolio. Nor have I regretted the decision to leave oils behind.

Will I ever go back to oils? I can’t answer that. I still have all my supplies stashed in a closet. But I don’t really have the space or time to paint right now.

And if I’m honest with myself, I can do almost everything with colored pencils that I could do with oils. I can also get pretty much the same results.

In other words, I’m happy with colored pencils and the flexibility they offer.

This post is part of a series in which readers ask questions about my life as an artist, and I answer them. Most of the posts this month will concern one of these questions. If you have a question you’d like to ask, please ask it. It’s never too late to get your burning questions answered!

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