Ann's Colored Pencil News & Stuff!

EASY image editing - Paint

You can do this. You can. Follow each step and you too will soon be cropping and resizing like a pro!! Step 1 Depending on what Windows you have, either click on Windows Start and type in Paint, or click on Windows Start > All Programs > Paint. Then click on Paint to open the program.   Step 2 With... View more

Young artist awakens...

I was maybe twelve, thirteen at the most. It was summer in the farming community of Forest Grove, Oregon, late 1960’s. Everyone picked strawberries the entire month of June so we were up long before dawn to catch the farmer’s strawberry bus, and were well tuckered out by mid-afternoon when the bus dropped us back home.  So this must have... View more

Fear, Baby Steps and a Guide to Pushing On Anyway

PLEASE NOTE: This article was written in 2001. Many things have changed, but I hope the article is still useful to you. Download this article: https://sowl.co/5Y1bC Fear, Baby Steps and a Guide to Pushing On Anyway A small, pale drawing of a subject I no longer remember, drawn in a medium I’d never heard of, that years ago I saw... View more

The whole truth and nothing but...

After yesterday's Facebook hurricane over Sally Ford/Robertson getting a "trademark" on the phrase colored pencil, I went to bed feeling incredibly grateful to the hundreds of supporters who leapt to my defense. But there was a little nagging unease deep inside, too… The truth is that I am not entirely blameless. So, in pursuit of a conscience as clear as... View more

Plastic wrap & colored pencil?

If you've been at colored pencil for a while, you might think you know just about all there is to know about colored pencil, but someone is always coming up with someone new! Click on the image below to read an excerpt from our book, CP Treasures, Volume III -  35% Off now through May 31st! Want to read more?... View more

For my Super Workshops (5-days, limited to 5 students) I require students send me their reference photos and line drawings about a month before the workshop begins. I become Mean & Picky Ann at this point, and won't let them transfer their tracing onto their drawing paper until I'm completely happy with their tracing. When it comes to portraits, you can not be careful enough with your line drawing (tracing) and if you rush this step and trace inaccurately, all is pretty much lost from the start. 

Safe Tracing Practices

For my Super Workshops (5-days, limited to 5 students) I require students send me their reference photos and line drawings about a month before the workshop begins. I become Mean & Picky Ann at this point, and won't let them transfer their tracing onto their drawing paper until I'm completely happy with their tracing. When it comes to portraits, you... View more
About 2 years ago, North Light books contacted me about a copyright infringement. An illustrator had copied two drawings from my Colored Pencil Portraits book.  The illustrator had made minor changes (hair color) but it was clearly copyright infringement. The drawings were included in a children's book by a small publishing company.  Even though the publishers themselves were completely ignorant of the illustrator's copyright infringement,

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT: It's a serious offense...

A Shock After 2 years in retirement, we brought our wonderful GLU-it TO-it widget back in stock. A couple days after putting it online, I checked Google to see if they'd already picked up the image from my website. They had!  (Google is some kind of magic, isn't it?) To my shock,  I also discovered that my image of the... View more

YIKES! That's a heck of a price hike??!!

I received the following perfectly understandable email this morning: Hi Ann,  The jump in the digital price of a magazine was a little under 25%.  That is quite a lot.  As a senior on a fixed income, that's a significant increase for me.  As you know, I've been a regular buyer but I am not sure if I will continue... View more