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So if you guys remember, a little while ago I posted this Planet Galaxy Practice , which, as the name implies, was meant to be a practice piece to get me back into doing galaxies in preparation for attempting to teach an IRL friend how to do the same.

Well, that may have sparked the realization that it might be good to practice a bit more and on a smaller scale to hopefully streamline the process a little. (As that last one took about three hours, which is a bit much.) And also practice different colors than just pink, blue, purple...Maybe also do another sky one just to see how far away the two options really are from each other...And the next thing I know, I'm slowly but surely filling up a piece of paper with small sky-filled hexagons.

I'll talk about each one individually since each has a bit of a story behind it, but first I need to establish a number order to make it easier to identify which one I'm talking about. The easiest for me would be the order I did them in, which is about like this (I can't tilt the numbers like the picture, so just bear with me):

12.
10. 8. 9. 11.
5. 4. 2. 7.
14. 6. 3. 1.
13.

Yeah, I didn't have a particular order in mind. I just did whatever.

So the first one actually didn't get finished because I learned very quickly that unlike in the original tutorial that got me started doing galaxies, color order actually does matter, at least when you're using two colors that don't mix well. Like red and green. It was a little too late to fix it, so instead, I just started over. The second one turned out better, but I had both forgotten to do some more practice with planets in my determination to make the main colors (yellow, red, and green) work, and also that when you are working with darker/mid-tone colors (or just a strong pigment like red in general) you really don't have to start with super duper light colors because by the time you get black there will be so many pencil layers on the paper that most of the texture will be crushed/burnished and it'll do this weird air-brushing thing. But, luckily, in this case, it works. But that won't always be workable. Never the less, it was good practice and it turned out decent.

On the third one, I was a little more careful with my color choices and I knew a little more about how to place them to prevent issues, and I remembered to do some planets. Honestly, this is one of my favorites to date, even after all the others on the sheet. The colors came out so pretty.

After that, I moved on to practice a daytime sky, only this time I managed to make some more realistic clouds. I'm not sure the rainbow came out quite as good as it could have, but it's not too bad.

I think I took a break after that. But I've been taking a lot of pictures around sunset lately since the sky has offered up some really gorgeous opportunities, so naturally, I have way too many pictures on my phone. So I decided to try recreating one of my favorite kinds; where all the pretty colors are framed by the black silhouette of trees & leaves. I need to work on my plant drawing, but other than that it turned out just fine.

With those two out of the way, I decided I should get back to the basic galaxy. This time I picked red, orange, and purple, which worked out nicely since you can arrange them into a natural color-spectrum progression and they'll play nice with each other. This was one of the more simple ones, but I still think it came out really good.

I think it was after that (though it might've been sooner, I'm not quite sure) that I tried my hand at doing one with alcohol markers, just to see. I ended up using the Chameleon color tones, and the more I use them the more inclined I am to think they blend better than some of the other markers I've tried, but that may just be because they're made to get gradients out of each marker. I don't know. They didn't work quite as smoothly as I'd hoped, but with a little touch of pencil and gel pen, I was able to work something reasonable out of it, I think. I have practiced a little on another paper to see if I could do better, but I think at present I'm just not experienced enough with markers to get a really good galaxy out of them. But I intend to keep working on that.

Then one night when we went to Wal-Mart, of all places, I got some really nice shots of the moon as it was coming up, so when I got home the idea of drawing one wasn't very hard to come by. It was almost like doing an inverted daytime sky; as it was mostly white with blue clouds, instead of the usual opposite. And you can't see it very well on the scan, but I did use a white gel pen to add the moon in, and in person, it really does make this one.

At some point, I made the connection that the colored pencil texture might really lend itself to doing the Northern Lights, and that was one of few sky-things I'd yet to try, so that was what number nine ended up being. And I was right! I think this is also one of my favorites. It combines a lot of different elements from the various other types quite nicely.

Up until this point, (we're on ten now, for those keeping track), I'd only been using colors from the 36 set of Prismacolor Premier pencils, since that's the set my student has and I figured that might make teaching easier and prove that you don't have to be excessive like me and have the 150 set to get good results. But I decided I'd stuck to that enough and let myself pick from the 150 set for this one, and I love how it turned out. I didn't even use black on this one, since I thought it did so well on its own. And I tried to lighten up the edge by erasing and it actually made a really good planet-y texture, too.

Let's see...Right. Nextly, I ended up with a 50 set of Sargent Art colored pencils that were on clearance at Wal-Mart for $1, regular price around $11, and I've heard good things about the brand (I even have a set of fine liners by them that work pretty well). Which was weird because they had a smaller set on the same shelf for $3 regular price. My guess is they have new packaging (as the 50 set looked pretty different from the smaller one) and needed the shelf space that the ones in the old packaging were taking up. Though it could be that and they've changed the formula, which if that's the case that might be a good thing. When I did the swatches, I already saw that, even for cheaper/budget pencils, they just weren't that good. It took an excessive amount of pressure to get good, deep colors out of them. Too much filler, not enough pigment in the core, I think. So this one didn't come out quite as polished as the others, but they weren't so terrible in an actual drawing that they were unusable. They blended and layered pretty okay, considering. The white pencil didn't really do much of anything though. So it's kind of a waste you get two in the pack. You also get two black, so you really get 48 colors total. And the colors were nice, and if you like bright pastels, they'd be great. In fact, a daytime sky probably would've done the pencils more justice. But I set out to do a galaxy and that's what I did.

Naturally, I didn't learn my lesson after the Sargent Art pencils and my curiosity got the better of me. I've had this 36 set of Simply Art by Loew Cornell that I got from Jo-Ann's in my collection for quite a while now, and I can't remember why I stopped using them, other than I believe it wasn't long after I got them that I got my first set of Prismacolors and probably didn't look back. I swatched them out, and their swatches actually went a lot better. They still weren't as nice as Prismacolor, but that's not really fair as they're still more of a budget pencil, but they were pretty decent. I had better hopes for a field test with them, especially after even the Sargent Art one went better than expected.
Unfortunately, the further I went, the worse it got. They blend okay, but these pencils really do not like to layer, especially not the black. And even though I didn't have that many layers down and was using a light pressure, very quickly they turned to that slippery-feel that means you can't really get much more layering out of them. I kept trying for a few minutes before realizing that they just weren't going to behave, so I had to stop.
Just goes to show, I guess, that you can't always judge a pencil by its swatches. I'm still a little miffed about the whole thing.

Luckily, the next day my art student and I finally had the actual lesson, which resulted in number 13, and I got to use my Prismacolors again, which was such a relief, let me tell you. And I think it went well, all things considered. My student still has a bit to learn in terms of blending, but that's okay. I know from experience that can be a hard thing to learn and thus it's not easy to teach. In a lot of ways, you learn to blend best by practicing and experimenting. Or at least I did. You can tell someone to blend and show them how, but it's hard to really convey what the process is like when you're actually doing it, you know? But there is time, so they can learn. But I do think they did make at least some progress and I actually taught them something, which is nice.

Since I started at random, I ended up with just one more full hexagon space, and the idea occurred to me during the lesson that some of these techniques might lend themselves to a lightning shot as well. So earlier today that's what I filled the last one up with. It needs work, but it was my first one and I wasn't careful enough, so the gel pen wouldn't cut it for the lightning strike itself, so I had to break out the white-out and a broken-tipped chopstick. It's still rough around the edges, but for a first attempt I think it's okay.

I am both happy and sad to have filled up the whole thing and having finally done the lesson. I was having fun. In fact, I may have to do some more of these in the future, maybe just whenever I'm in a creative slump. They're pretty easy, though not always quick, and I think they're a good way to practice some skills and just really enjoy the artistic process without having to have a full-fledged fresh idea every time, you know?

Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings

Where to find me & my artwork:
My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

Description
So if you guys remember, a little while ago I posted this Planet Galaxy Practice , which, as the name implies, was meant to be a practice piece to get me back into doing galaxies in preparation for attempting to teach an IRL friend how to do the same.

Well, that may have sparked the realization that it might be good to practice a bit more and on a smaller scale to hopefully streamline the process a little. (As that last one took about three hours, which is a bit much.) And also practice different colors than just pink, blue, purple...Maybe also do another sky one just to see how far away the two options really are from each other...And the next thing I know, I'm slowly but surely filling up a piece of paper with small sky-filled hexagons.

I'll talk about each one individually since each has a bit of a story behind it, but first I need to establish a number order to make it easier to identify which one I'm talking about. The easiest for me would be the order I did them in, which is about like this (I can't tilt the numbers like the picture, so just bear with me):

12.
10. 8. 9. 11.
5. 4. 2. 7.
14. 6. 3. 1.
13.

Yeah, I didn't have a particular order in mind. I just did whatever.

So the first one actually didn't get finished because I learned very quickly that unlike in the original tutorial that got me started doing galaxies, color order actually does matter, at least when you're using two colors that don't mix well. Like red and green. It was a little too late to fix it, so instead, I just started over. The second one turned out better, but I had both forgotten to do some more practice with planets in my determination to make the main colors (yellow, red, and green) work, and also that when you are working with darker/mid-tone colors (or just a strong pigment like red in general) you really don't have to start with super duper light colors because by the time you get black there will be so many pencil layers on the paper that most of the texture will be crushed/burnished and it'll do this weird air-brushing thing. But, luckily, in this case, it works. But that won't always be workable. Never the less, it was good practice and it turned out decent.

On the third one, I was a little more careful with my color choices and I knew a little more about how to place them to prevent issues, and I remembered to do some planets. Honestly, this is one of my favorites to date, even after all the others on the sheet. The colors came out so pretty.

After that, I moved on to practice a daytime sky, only this time I managed to make some more realistic clouds. I'm not sure the rainbow came out quite as good as it could have, but it's not too bad.

I think I took a break after that. But I've been taking a lot of pictures around sunset lately since the sky has offered up some really gorgeous opportunities, so naturally, I have way too many pictures on my phone. So I decided to try recreating one of my favorite kinds; where all the pretty colors are framed by the black silhouette of trees & leaves. I need to work on my plant drawing, but other than that it turned out just fine.

With those two out of the way, I decided I should get back to the basic galaxy. This time I picked red, orange, and purple, which worked out nicely since you can arrange them into a natural color-spectrum progression and they'll play nice with each other. This was one of the more simple ones, but I still think it came out really good.

I think it was after that (though it might've been sooner, I'm not quite sure) that I tried my hand at doing one with alcohol markers, just to see. I ended up using the Chameleon color tones, and the more I use them the more inclined I am to think they blend better than some of the other markers I've tried, but that may just be because they're made to get gradients out of each marker. I don't know. They didn't work quite as smoothly as I'd hoped, but with a little touch of pencil and gel pen, I was able to work something reasonable out of it, I think. I have practiced a little on another paper to see if I could do better, but I think at present I'm just not experienced enough with markers to get a really good galaxy out of them. But I intend to keep working on that.

Then one night when we went to Wal-Mart, of all places, I got some really nice shots of the moon as it was coming up, so when I got home the idea of drawing one wasn't very hard to come by. It was almost like doing an inverted daytime sky; as it was mostly white with blue clouds, instead of the usual opposite. And you can't see it very well on the scan, but I did use a white gel pen to add the moon in, and in person, it really does make this one.

At some point, I made the connection that the colored pencil texture might really lend itself to doing the Northern Lights, and that was one of few sky-things I'd yet to try, so that was what number nine ended up being. And I was right! I think this is also one of my favorites. It combines a lot of different elements from the various other types quite nicely.

Up until this point, (we're on ten now, for those keeping track), I'd only been using colors from the 36 set of Prismacolor Premier pencils, since that's the set my student has and I figured that might make teaching easier and prove that you don't have to be excessive like me and have the 150 set to get good results. But I decided I'd stuck to that enough and let myself pick from the 150 set for this one, and I love how it turned out. I didn't even use black on this one, since I thought it did so well on its own. And I tried to lighten up the edge by erasing and it actually made a really good planet-y texture, too.

Let's see...Right. Nextly, I ended up with a 50 set of Sargent Art colored pencils that were on clearance at Wal-Mart for $1, regular price around $11, and I've heard good things about the brand (I even have a set of fine liners by them that work pretty well). Which was weird because they had a smaller set on the same shelf for $3 regular price. My guess is they have new packaging (as the 50 set looked pretty different from the smaller one) and needed the shelf space that the ones in the old packaging were taking up. Though it could be that and they've changed the formula, which if that's the case that might be a good thing. When I did the swatches, I already saw that, even for cheaper/budget pencils, they just weren't that good. It took an excessive amount of pressure to get good, deep colors out of them. Too much filler, not enough pigment in the core, I think. So this one didn't come out quite as polished as the others, but they weren't so terrible in an actual drawing that they were unusable. They blended and layered pretty okay, considering. The white pencil didn't really do much of anything though. So it's kind of a waste you get two in the pack. You also get two black, so you really get 48 colors total. And the colors were nice, and if you like bright pastels, they'd be great. In fact, a daytime sky probably would've done the pencils more justice. But I set out to do a galaxy and that's what I did.

Naturally, I didn't learn my lesson after the Sargent Art pencils and my curiosity got the better of me. I've had this 36 set of Simply Art by Loew Cornell that I got from Jo-Ann's in my collection for quite a while now, and I can't remember why I stopped using them, other than I believe it wasn't long after I got them that I got my first set of Prismacolors and probably didn't look back. I swatched them out, and their swatches actually went a lot better. They still weren't as nice as Prismacolor, but that's not really fair as they're still more of a budget pencil, but they were pretty decent. I had better hopes for a field test with them, especially after even the Sargent Art one went better than expected.
Unfortunately, the further I went, the worse it got. They blend okay, but these pencils really do not like to layer, especially not the black. And even though I didn't have that many layers down and was using a light pressure, very quickly they turned to that slippery-feel that means you can't really get much more layering out of them. I kept trying for a few minutes before realizing that they just weren't going to behave, so I had to stop.
Just goes to show, I guess, that you can't always judge a pencil by its swatches. I'm still a little miffed about the whole thing.

Luckily, the next day my art student and I finally had the actual lesson, which resulted in number 13, and I got to use my Prismacolors again, which was such a relief, let me tell you. And I think it went well, all things considered. My student still has a bit to learn in terms of blending, but that's okay. I know from experience that can be a hard thing to learn and thus it's not easy to teach. In a lot of ways, you learn to blend best by practicing and experimenting. Or at least I did. You can tell someone to blend and show them how, but it's hard to really convey what the process is like when you're actually doing it, you know? But there is time, so they can learn. But I do think they did make at least some progress and I actually taught them something, which is nice.

Since I started at random, I ended up with just one more full hexagon space, and the idea occurred to me during the lesson that some of these techniques might lend themselves to a lightning shot as well. So earlier today that's what I filled the last one up with. It needs work, but it was my first one and I wasn't careful enough, so the gel pen wouldn't cut it for the lightning strike itself, so I had to break out the white-out and a broken-tipped chopstick. It's still rough around the edges, but for a first attempt I think it's okay.

I am both happy and sad to have filled up the whole thing and having finally done the lesson. I was having fun. In fact, I may have to do some more of these in the future, maybe just whenever I'm in a creative slump. They're pretty easy, though not always quick, and I think they're a good way to practice some skills and just really enjoy the artistic process without having to have a full-fledged fresh idea every time, you know?

Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings

Where to find me & my artwork:
My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram