"From my perspective"

by Coloured Pencil Artist Peter Kripgans

There are two mainstreams in coloured pencil art, namely photorealistic works (that is the majority) and so-called “free-style” works, i.e. non-photorealistic, but realistic. Abstract works are rare indeed.

Naturally nearly all acknowledged coloured pencil portrait artists (people or pets) belong to the photorealistic artist branch. See examples at the sites of pet-portraitartists Melanie Phillips and Nicole Jahan and portrait artist Ann Kullberg. In landscaping, architectural drawing, etc, however, there are others applying the free-style.

I’ve to mention one excellent coloured pencil artist, Ines Scheppach, who is drawing really lively scenes and is not to be classified as pure landscaper and/or portrait artist. She nevertheless is a “free-stylist”.

Myself, I don’t want to be classified neither as a landscaper nor as an architectural drawing artist, though many of my works are just have been put into such registers. Nevertheless I am a “free-stylist” applying the impressionistic approach, means simply that light (and the colour adopted to it) is more important to me than the physical object.

This conditioned another kind of coloured pencil drawing technique because one cannot take a photo to draw from and just taking the colours from that! I am working from photos though but the process is different naturally. Firstly I am doing all photos myself. I note down the inspiration regarding light and colours the moment I shoot the photo. This is my reference later on.
Before starting to draw I am doing a colour layout that is nothing else than a translation of the photo into “my perspective”. I am doing then a 1:1 sketch in b/w that will serve as my reference for the drawing.
The colour layout is not just to be a colour range but also a table of details or elements that have to be enhanced for reason of my “view”. All this is very time consuming and that is the reason why I need about 150 to 200 hours for one
drawing (40 x 30 cm).

I really hope that I’ve answered many questions that have been put to me at various times but feel free to ask me questions at any time.