Review: Mixed Media Drawing with Colored Pencil & Ink Wash by Robert Kogge (Craftsy course)

Robert Kogge's Mixed Media Drawing video course on Craftsy is probably more suitable for intermediate to advanced artists.

This is a mixed media drawing course that focuses on using coloured pencil with some ink wash on canvas.

I find this to be a challenging course because you have to be really good at observing the subtle shifts in tonal value. And you certainly need a lot of patience because coloured pencils is not a quick medium. You'll see that when Robert Kogge applies layers of coloured pencil and going back to and fro retouch the artwork.

The 116-minute course starts with teaching you how to prepare your canvas to make it suitable for drawing on it. You'll need to prepare a tonal ground that's made of matte medium, pumice and a mixture of coloured inks. That will coat the canvas to protect it so that you can work on it with layers of colour pencils and ink washes. The canvas is also toned to a specific colour with those coloured ink to set the primary underlying tone. The coloured pencils used are from Pismacolor.

Highlight of the course is the detailed explanation on how to create the subtle shifts in colours and tone. This is then applied to create the spacial relationships between the subjects, in this case three lemons, to make they appear dimensional. In a separate example, he shows how with just a simple change of colour, an object can appear to come forward or recede into the background. I found that to be amazing.

In the last lesson of the course, he talks about the different mistakes and how to correct them, and also gives more tips on drawing.

Robert's creates mainly fine art characterised by form and shade. His artworks look amazing. And if you want to learn some techniques from him, this would be the video course to get.

Mixed Media Drawing is available on Craftsy.com.

These are some examples uploaded students in his course.

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. :-)