Creating Ambiance

Mona Parker Weidner selects colors palettes and light sources that emphasize the mood of her interior scenes

- Mona Parker Weidner

For the last seven years, I've enjoyed the and making art. Of the several mediums I've explored, colored pencil has become my favorite. I work in a realistic style and colored pencils allow me to produce fine details as well as large areas of luminous color. Colored pencil can be drawn to look like other mediums such as oil paint, watercolors, pastels and photographs, prompting exclamations of "that's colored pencil?!" My goals for a drawing are not uncommon.

My hope is to capture a mood, or tell a story, or portray beauty, or something unusual-or all of these into one great picture! I've drawn still lifes, animals, portraits, landscapes and interiors. If I've concentrated more on one category than others, it would be interiors like the one in this demonstration. A room and its furnishings can set a mood or tell a story about the people who live in them. When drawing interiors, I generally use a palette that includes white to portray light streaming from windows and deep darks for shadows to set the mood and add drama.