Comments on: The Colored Pencil Course – Value and the Underpainting

By: JoLaine Jones-Pokorney

JoLaine Jones-Pokorney — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:19:04 +0000

I was curious about the timing of the burnishing with the turpenoid. You burnished, but then added more color to the background as well as more shading and details to the apples. Is there a general rule of thumb to know at what point you want to burnish?

By: JoLaine Jones-Pokorney

JoLaine Jones-Pokorney — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:16:58 +0000

In reply to Kathy Roeske. The photos are under "resources" for each lesson.

By: Maggie Meehan

Maggie Meehan — Sun, 24 May 2026 21:54:24 +0000

In reply to Leslie Milrod.

I’m addicted to The Virtual Instructor and feel so lucky to have found this website. I have a question about applying the turpenoid. My background looked a bit splotchy. I was thinking it might work to add another layer of the colored pencil and then apply more turpenoid. Would that work?

Can’t wait to get started on the wine bottles in the next session.

Maggie

By: Linda Kramer

Linda Kramer — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:38:51 +0000

This was an excellent demonstration; however, I was very disappointed in my result. I have caran d’ache, and I used Cassel Earth for the underpainting, Lemon Yellow next, and this may be where I went wrong. Your pencil looked quite bright, but I’m thinking I should have used Olive Yellow. I later did a patch test, and that worked better; however, in either case, my blue came out very blue in the shadows and too bright otherwise. I used Phthalo Blue originally, then Prussian Blue on the patch test . . . still reads very blue. I wasn’t really happy with any of my combos. Do you have any advice in addition to do the patch test first, which I will do from now on. Thanks.

By: Kathy Roeske

Kathy Roeske — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 21:22:48 +0000

Hi Chris, why don’t you include a photo of the apples you are drawing? It would help a lot.

By: matt

matt — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 13:35:38 +0000

In reply to Jason Elkin. Hi Jason, Yes, you are correct. You can layer lighter colors to a certain degree, but if you are too dark with the colors underneath, you won't see much of a change. When you create your underpainting, you need to be mindful of the areas that will be of lighter value, and leave these areas open or layer pencil applications lightly.

By: Jason Elkin

Jason Elkin — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 15:14:09 +0000

Hi Matt, I was under the impression that you can’t layer light colours on top of dark colours, but that seems to go against the idea of an underpainting. Am I incorrect that light colours can’t be layered on top of dark colours?

By: Elaine Munro

Elaine Munro — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:35:46 +0000

I like your teaching and details explained along the way. Alcohol works for blending my Polychromos pencils, and I will start the apples exercise, but pick out background closer to the reference, as yours seemed too dark for my eyes. Also, I want to make the apples look more of a pale light green. P.s. the peppers exercise really got me to use harder strokes and I liked the result.

By: Ester Silinsky

Ester Silinsky — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 10:34:35 +0000

In reply to matt. VERY good to know this!!!

By: Ester Silinsky

Ester Silinsky — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 10:27:11 +0000

In reply to Ricardo Gaston-Johnston. I wholeheartedly agree!