Like all children I did heaps of drawing and other craft activities when I was young and since then I haven't really stopped. I did Visual Arts and Design & Technology all the way through high school. Whilst I have pursued a career in plant science and agriculture rather than art, creativity is an integral part of science and research. So welcome to my hobby...
Pre-2016 when i felt like drawing I would find a picture I liked on the internet and then draw it in graphite pencil, I never used colour.
In 2016 I started experimenting with graphite drawings of plants from photos, leading me to want to try colour but not knowing where to start. So for Christmas one year after me giving hints I received three great books. The book by Wendy Hollender called 'Botanical Drawing in Colour' quickly became my favourite as it used normal pencils, rather than watercolour paints and pencils.
This book starts at the basics of capturing form and shading, all the way through to colour blending and the production of full blown colour drawings, which by the end look pretty close to what you can get with watercolour.
The most amazing part of this was learning that a collection of only 20 pencils can be used to mix basically every colour you can imagine. After working with these 20 for awhile a collection of Derwent's from my childhood were rediscovered at my Dad's place which I now use as well, but my base 20 are still the go to.
Other essential items in my tool box are my HB, 4H and 6H graphite pencils, pacers with various lead types, a normal eraser and a knead-able eraser, an erasing shield, sharpener, a transparent ruler, my compass (from tech drawing at school) and my sketch books.
After using the old school tracing paper method for transferring for almost 2 years, I bought myself a light box (well the size of it hardly classifies it as a box, but anyway). This was the best $10 I've spent on eBay, it's super slim and portable A4 size, lit with LEDs.
