#ILM
Anyone can learn the technique of sketching with a pencil if they are
willing to devote the necessary time. but it's the shading that will
define who has learned the technique and who has mastered it. They
used to teach sketching to engineering students just so they could
present their ideas in a form other's could understand. (guess they
don't do that anymore.)
I think you are wrong when you say that you don't have to learn how to
mix colors. If you are going to work in color, you have to understand
what will happen when you combine them. One of the exercises we did
(and this was a loooooong time ago) was to create some nonsensical
drawings, and then paint them. We had the use of any color we wished,
but we could only use one color per drawing. (well…actually it was
two colors cause we used the complement to grey out the primary to
create the palette.) That is quite an exercise. You should try it. I
think you will be quite surprised. But if you do, limit yourself to
just ten scale steps between the primary and black. That ought to be
really interesting on a computer screen.
Then there is the exercise where you use nothing but slashes of
primary color on a muted background……but that's for
later……<grin>.
The study of color is never wasted time. Did you know that for the
longest time grocery stores purchased pink fluorescent tubes for the
light fixtures over the meat counters ???? Wonder why they did that
????….<grin>. Maybe they still do ??? And why didn't they use
yellow instead ????