Name: Alissa Duke
Website address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alissaduke/
Location: NSW Australia
All images copyright of the featured artist and maynot be reproduced without written permission. © 2012 All rights reserved.
Please tell us a little about how you got started in coloured pencil art.
I have been drawing with pencil since high school, but not regularly. After moving to Sydney in 2004 I discovered watercolour pencil. I was thinking of using them as a step towards learning to use watercolours, but have since realised that I do not want to go in that direction and am very happy to continue watercolour pencils to explore them as a medium in themselves.
I now draw everyday, either quick sketches documenting my day, or longer drawings for various online drawing challenges .
What do you like about using coloured pencils in your artwork?
I use watercolour pencil. I really don’t have experience with many other mediums.
Watercolour pencils (also called water soluble pencil) can be used and left dry on the page or you can use water from a brush or waterbrush to distribute or blend parts of the pigment or take pigment of the end of the pencil with the brush. I usually build up layers with a combination of methods.I always refer to them as drawings , not paintings
They are excellent for sketching while travelling as I can take and use them anywhere. I can either use them as the main medium as a combination of wet and dry, or just to add a wash to a pen drawing. I love to explore the softness that they can create, as well as the defined lines. I love the way that they are applied on the paper can change the look and feel of a drawing.
Which are your favourite pencils and supports/surfaces to work on?
I use different brands of pencils – mainly Derwent and Faber-Castell, and I buy them for their colour, rather than the brand. I draw in Moleskine watercolour sketchbook. I am just about to be begin my 24th sketchbook since beginning using them in 2009.
I am going to try and move outside my comfort zone and start doing drawing slightly one off pieces of larger paper of a similar texture and weight.
Do you have any particular themes or subjects in your art? What are they and why ?
I try and draw a variety of subjects, as I mentioned, documenting places, people, food or events in my life. I contribute to Nature Sketcher s , Urbansketchers Australia as well as Artists Journal Workshop, Illustration Friday blogs and facebook page
However I seem to have an affinity with drawing Nature object s such as feathers, eggs, birds, leaves, insects …I contribute to Nature Sketcher s blog, although I do as much on location nature sketching as I would like to.
Please tell us about any Awards or Exhibitions you have been featured in.
I have been fortunate enough to be included as a featured artist in a book by Kate Johnson titled Artists Journal Workshop and as a contributor to the followup blog of the same title .
Kate also included me in a half page feature on ‘feathers and fur” in Watercolour magazine article that she wrote on Watercolour pencils in April 2011.
Thankyou so much Alissa for sharing with us your work and letting us get to know about you.
All images copyright of the featured artist and maynot be reproduced without written permission. © 2012 All rights reserved.
