Faster Mediums; Colored Pencils

[Sloane]

I need to focus on fast mediums for my upcoming exams.

(Note: I try to keep my artwork under 5 consecutive hours.)

I thought colored pencils would be a good idea. However, as I tried doing artwork on the sizes I'm used to (28 x 20 inches and 14 x 20 inches), I found it nearly impossible to fill in backgrounds in the way my teacher taught me (layers upon layers, applied with very soft scrumbling). As I watched time on the clock pass me by, I soon got disheartened, started filling in with back and forth strokes instead, and it looked patchy and generally awful.


Should I just be more patient? Or are colored pencils simply not the tool for the job?


(Yeah, I've hypothesized this might be a stupid reason to start a thread, so please don't hesitate to also give me further tips on colored pencils or mention other mediums that you would consider fast and reliable for art school exams.)

[JonHop]

acrylics are a fast medium as they dry super quick, im not sure what kind of piece you're working on exactly though but it is quite a big surface area. You could always use big brushes with oil paint alla prima in the bob ross style as you dont have to wait for the oils to dry to continue painting.

[Ursula Dorada]

Colored pencils are as far as fast as possible. Since you can't cover big areas, you're set for trouble.

Acrylics are fast drying; You can use some mediums to make it even faster, but that will make your life hard working for smooth gradients
If you're not rendering, watercolors can be awesome too, as long as you keep it more towards dry brush techniques. If you soak in too much water, it can take quite a while to dry and you will have to wait it up.

Markers are pretty good for fast techniques, but very poor archival quality.

But avoid colored pencils - they are much better to add detail to acrylics if you're working fast.

[Doolio]

My advice would be acrylics. They dry super fast (if you are glazing or making thin layers, they are pretty much completely dry when you get to the next layer). Also, you can cover large areas pretty fast, just take larger brush:) Also, you wash brushes with water and you pretty much don't need anything except water as a medium (though you could add some yolk or go and by some mediums to keep the contrast).

Now, this is pretty much unrelated to your situation, but I would like to add that I think acrylics are exceptionally good for practicing, as they don't blend too much and they dry fast, so you are basically doing the guess-the-value-and-color game the whole time you are painting.

[meat]

If you need it to be a dry medium, maybe try oil sticks or pastels, they cover larger area faster than fine-point color pencils. Otherwise the people above who are more experienced have given you the answer.

[billycamryn]

I would suggest you LUKAS CRYL Pastos. These acrylics dry quick and build up thick layers.

You can also use the LUKAS Cryl mediums..
It helps in Quick-drying and give synthetic resin varnish for acrylic, oil and alkyd paintings. You can find it at JerrysArtarama's at a good discount.

hope this helps and good luck... keep testing what will work for you