Chelsea Ward introduces the reader to pencil types, color theory, shading, blending, page tone, shading and shadows. This book is a great starting point for learning how to draw with different techniques and exercises and covers the basics as well how to apply them. I especially like the section on texture and find the projects a as I'm just starting out learning to draw and color.

Great book for beginners! There is information about types of pencils, types of mark making, color theory--everything you need to get started with color pencils. Then, the best part, are all the projects with examples to practice your skills. Highly recommend!

If you're someone who already knows how to draw, but just hasn't had a chance to figure out the specifics of colored pencils yet, I think this book would be a fantastic addition to your library.

It covers everything from the basics -- how a colored pencil is made (and the differences between wax- and oil-based compositions, which always confused me) and how to layer them the right way -- to fairly specific tips on using them for most major subjects (animals, people, landscapes, objects). It's not the same as using a wet medium like watercolor or acrylic, and has a lot of great info about how to get colored pencils to work for you.

The exercises were clear and stepped-out well. (None of that "draw a tree" in the first frame and "now you're done!" in the next, where a bunch of steps are glossed over.) She goes into just the right amount of detail so that you understand the concept of what she's doing, without being so detailed that you feel like you can't apply those concepts to your own work vs. just her specific example. The instruction is on point.

I do think it helps to come into this with a good working knowledge of drawing. I think the publishers stuck in a few drawing instructions here and there to cater to the more beginner set, but because this is so medium-specific in most places, and not intended to be a drawing instructional manual, it probably could have been left out...or expanded significantly. A newcomer to drawing might find it challenging and/or frustrating otherwise.

But if you can draw confidently already, I think this is a fabulous introduction to using colored pencils in your work, and to expand your expertise.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this ebook.

Who doesn't love holding a colored pencil? Modern Colored Pencil by Chelsea Ward is for all those people who wants to improve their technique and and also for people who are just starting out.

Great book for anyone looking to improve their artistic skills in color pencils. Loved the great photograhy, i structions and tips. Highly recommended!

This is a good beginner book about colored pencils. It gives you information about how to start as well as detailed project. If you've never done any art with color pencils you will find this book useful. advanced users can give this a miss. The authors drawing style is simple yet fun. A good book!

I recently started to draw for myself and the fun of it but I recognize that I needed something to help me decide with what I liked to draw, what technic I like to use.

This book helped me a lot and I enjoyed reading it.

Thanks for the opportunity to read this book and work with it

This is a great book to take you from not knowing how to work with colored pencils effectively, to learning to how to do more complicated techniques, like blending and layering! The book takes you from the very basics, the different tyoes of colored pencil, and why you need the different ones. Then it takes you onto actual drawing and learning to see shapes, to simplify how you draw, nd to be able to focus on details, an important concept to learn! With actual projects, you can work through, you learn as you are actually completing pieces. This is a huge confidence builder! This is a fun book for tween, teens and adults!

This is an excellent guide to colored pencil drawing. You learn everything from using the color wheel to blending colors. This is very colorful book with lots of vibrant illustrations to get you started in modern colored pencil.

There are a lot of books on painting and drawing on the market, but not many on how to use colour pencils to create depth, perspective and toning. With lots of examples this book fills a gap in this medium, and not only in original art work but for anyone who wishes to add a more personal touch to all the colouring books available today for both adults and children.

Modern Colored Pencil is great for beginners and has great techniques. Easy to understand and follow.

I really enjoyed this book. It gives good advice for people who want to start trying coloring and give more deepth and brightness to what they create. I already knew some of the theory because my mother is an arts teacher, but I enjoyed having it explained step by step with clear images of the elements to use, in which way to use them and how to be able to making the most of them.

Nice book, has a section on tools which was helpful for me since I am new to the medium. Has good step by step on making intricate colored pencil work with tons of layers.

I love coloring. I’m always looking for how to books to improve without feeling like here’s no way I could live up to the instructions. This book was beautiful and helpful. I feel like I could color like this. The illustrations were simple and beautiful while being detailed. This is definitely a great book to learn or improve skills with.

I enjoyed learning about pencil work.

I would like to thank the publisher for giving me a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Very informative! I'm just beginning my colored pencils journey and I enjoyed learning the differences of oil based vs wax based (I prefer oil based) The tutorials and brightly pictured examples were great

Thank you netgalley for the chance to view the pdf in exchange for my honest opinion

While Modern Colored Pencil requires you to be a tolerable at drawing to really get value from it; there is certainly some value here for the average colourer that just wants to colour in a fancier book.
Chelsea Ward takes the reader through types of pencil, colour theory, shading, blending, page tone & texture, patterns, strokes and shadows. The most important of which is really blending and shadows. Progressing through Ward's book it felt like the perfect set-up to move from beginner to more expert concepts. The last few pages may not feel useful to the non-drawing artist or the more casual colouring hobbyist but there are still great items to grab from these pages; including skin tones, hair colours and more blending info! For example: blue goes in black to get truly black hair, purple goes in red to get the darker shades on an apple, etc.
Finally the best part of Ward's book is that she has samples for you to work with. Draw a rough sketch of an apple (just wing it, this isn't about drawing but about colouring). Then she lists the colours used. You'll be surprised in every instance (I'm willing to bet) about what colours it takes to get the green of an avocado or the black of a dog's hair. These colour palettes and the shadows and blending Ward shows are easily the best part of this book.
I can't speak to the colours or page quality as I had an eARC of Modern Colored Pencil; but I can say that on screen everything looked quite good and it's clear that Ward knows her colour theory and palettes very well. A better investment for someone looking to drawn and then colour; but not a bad choice for the casual colourer that wants to step it up a notch or two.
Reviewer's Note: I am Canadian and so colour is spelled with a 'u'. Ward's book is spelled the American way and so I used each where appropriate as would be used here in Canada.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

This book is very well structured, and I think that for a beginner it serves as a great introduction to coloured pencils and colour theory. The first half is the most useful of the book, it goes over basic stuff like colour wheel, equipment (this part was maybe a little bit redundant), shading etc., which can be good for people who never took an interest in art and are eager to start. The second part consists of a kind of step-by-step drawings of different objects, animals and people, from those the occasional tip written in cursive comes in handy.

I wouldn't say that the book gave me much, but I took extracurricular art classes for nine years, so I'm probably not the target audience. It really goes over everything which I can appreciate even though for me it was just a refreshment of my memory. For someone who just started with art from the scratch, I think it's very useful and also very aesthetically pleasing book. The illustrations are very pretty, and I really liked the boxes with colours used that were next to all the illustrations.

I learned a lot from reading this and I think young people and adults would benefit from reading this. I like how there were visual examples to show what was being explained. This helped make sense of what the author was saying. I will remember things better because I was able to see the visual example. I can't wait to try these different techniques.

This is a very useful guide to the use of coloured pencils. The author covers all the basic equipment options before moving on to the theories of how to combine different colours , the colour wheel , and mark making techniques . She then moves on to how to blend, burnish and layer colours before moving onto step by step exercises to practice these techniques.- from a flower, through fruits, various animals and finally the human form. It is an extremely easy to follow guide and the step by step practice sessions really are broken down very well and described in such detail that you feel confident to give it a go. As someone who hasn’t picked up a coloured pencil for many years and am wanting to have a go at something arty this is a great starting point which builds up to more complex items to draw. My only criticism is that I would have liked a bit more detail on how to tackle the more complex tasks. Successfully drawing a dog or human face seems far more complex than an avocado for example and I feel these sections could have been added to. More examples of how to actually draw hair, eyes and lips would have been useful, but then maybe it is because I find these things particularly daunting to tackle. Nevertheless a great beginners book and one that my daughter will be finding under the Christmas tree this year!