Prismacolor Basics Tutorial

Hey everyone! I am soooo excited about my post today. I spent a long time getting ready for this one and I hope you like it. It’s my turn to post for Whatcha Tootin’ About Wednesday over at Club Anya and my tutorial is on Primsacolors and OMS. I know there are a ton of these tutorials out there and I haven’t seen a single one, lol. I’ve been using Prismacolors since way before my card making days as an artist/art teacher and I thought I’d pass on some of the things I’ve learned from those applications as well as some of the things I’ve picked up since card making. Hopefully something in there will inspire you to give them a try.

Now first thing… a word or two about colored pencils. There are lots of great brands out there. Prismacolors are the most recognizable but not necessarily the best. Derwent makes a great set as does Felissimo and I’m sure there are other’s still that are good. The brand doesn’t really matter as long as you get a nice soft lead that blends well.

Second thing… OMS or Odorless Mineral Spirits. There are about 1000 brands of this and it’s easily purchased at Lowes, Home Depot, Micheal’s or Hobby Lobby. Gamsol is a very recognizable brand. I happen to really like Grumbacher Odorless Thinner as I was able to find it in a tiny child proof plastic bottle that’s very portable and fits right in my colored pencil tin.

The third and fourth things you need are blending stumps and a nail file. Blending stumps come in pretty generic brands and come in multiple packs. You’ll want around 10-12 stumps as you need one for each color family you’ll be using. Be sure to get a stump and not a tortillon. The Tortillions are in the same area of the art supply store (in the drawing supplies) but don’t work very well for this application (I’ve tried). The nail file is to clean and re-point your blending stumps.

Now that all of that is out of the way. 😀 Here’s the video demonstrating how I use my pencils. I’ll go over some of the above information in the video so you may want to jump ahead a bit.

Prismacolor tutorial from Deconstructing Jen on Vimeo.

And here’s my card that I made using my finished up Ebony from the video.

And here’s a close up of the coloring.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial! If you’d like to participate in this week’s WTW Challenge all you need to do is give colored pencils a try on a project and post it in The Greeting Farm Galleria under Club Anya & Friends/Contest and Challenges/WTW/Jen’s Prismacolors.