Review: Colored Pencil Essentials by Susan Rubin (Craftsy)

I've finally found a coloured pencil course that I enjoy, that uses the same set of coloured pencils I'm using, and where the instructor is amazing.

Susan Rubin is a botanical artist from Colorado, USA. She has been teaching for 15 years and her experience in teaching really shows. She explains with such clarity it's so refreshing.

Her Colored Pencil Essentials course runs for 141 minutes and is split into seven lessons, namely:

• First Steps - 26 min
• Color Basics - 14 min
• Luminous Color Layering - 20 min
• Surface Textures in Colored Pencil - 26 min
• Color & Texture Come Together - 20 min
• Background & Atmosphere - 14 min
• Bright & Bold Colors - 21 min

The first few lessons talks about the coloured pencils themselves, the tools you'll need. Her course uses the 36-piece Faber Castell Polychromos set. Also quite important to have is the Copic colourless blender that she uses often. That's all you need really, plus eraser and blu-tack as eraser.

In the course, you'll get to learn how to create colour swatches, how to think about colours and layering with coloured pencils. Each coloured pencil used has the colour code specifically mentioned and it's quite impossible to get lost while following the lessons. The exercises are simple and almost effortless to learn. You'll learn how to create textures, blend colours, understand why some colours work well and other don't.

The earlier lessons will provide the techniques you need for the last lesson that ties everything together with a more challenging exercise, that of drawing a flower, of course.

The course is full of insights and is great for beginners who want to learn to use coloured pencils.

Over 1,000 students have already enrolled in the course.

Most highly recommended.

You can check out more reviews on the course page below.

Disclosure: This course was provided to me by Craftsy for review purposes. You can support Parka Blogs by using the affiliate links as I get a little commission from each sale. :-)