CP Treasures

No artwork to post today, as I have been working on quite a detailed commission over the last week, which is actually for a wedding present, and so I can't reveal anything at this stage. For those of you who love coloured pencils as I do, please take the time to check out the latest CP Treasures book. I feel extremely honoured to have been included amongst the 70 coloured pencil artists from around the world who have had their work featured in this book. I can't wait to receive my own copy so I can pore over and admire all the coloured pencil artworks and to read about the very talented artists who have created them.

Let's Count Kisses Preview Books Out!

I received my copies of the preview books for Let's Count Kisses this week and am really thrilled with the way Hachette have compiled the books. It will be available in hard or paperback and features flaps on many of the pages. This book is targeting the 0-2 year age group and is meant to be an interactive bed time book for parents and grandparents to share with their little ones. The book is due to be published and available in retail outlets from the 8th May :)

Acceptance to the CPSA Explore This 8 Exhibition

I was delighted to discover this week that my piece 'What About Me' was accepted into the Colored Pencil Society of America's Explore This! 8 on-line exhibition http://cpsa.org/coloredpencilartists/ET8Show/index.htm. If you get the opportunity to take a look, there are some wonderful artworks, all done with coloured pencils and it is inspiring to see what some artists are achieving with this very exciting medium. The exhibition will run for the next 12 months, so there is plenty of time to check it out! :)

Joy

Joy

8x11 inches

Coloured Pencils and solvent on Pastelmat

I entitled this artwork Joy for two reasons - the look of sheer glee on the face of my little neice Bailey and the absolute joy I had working on this portrait, I am definitely a fan of working with the Zest-it on the Pastelmat. It enabled me to get a lovely smooth canvas of skin in a relatively short time frame, and also smoothed out the texture of the Pastelmat, allowing me to add nice crisp details where they were needed. The only aspect I struggled with, was waiting for the paper to dry between applications of solvent before doing more pencil work - patience is not one of my virtues, but I think it did pay off in the end! :)

What a difference some solvent makes!

I must admit, I haven't had a lot of success in the past using solvents with coloured pencils, and yet I know a lot of pencil artists do use it with amazing results. I often seem to get a rather blotchy result, but on the Pastelmat, I found it really easy and am quite pleased with the results so far. Obviously, I still have a fair bit of work to do on this portrait, but whereas Heartbreak took somewhere between 20 and 30 hours to complete, this one has only had about 4-5 hours work on it and is already well under way. I also found that I could layer the pencil and solvent (zest-it) without previous layers lifting away.

Heartbreak completed

Heartbreak

8x11 inches

Coloured pencils on Pastelmat

Finally finished Heartbreak. I will try the next piece on white Pastelmat and use some solvent with the pencils to see how they go. For those of you who might be concerned for Jack and who was comforting him, his Mum is the best of mothers, and as soon as she grabbed a quick snapshot, there would have been plenty of hugs and smiles and a very happy ending. I am so grateful too, that his wonderful parents shared their photo for me to use :) xx

WIP 2 - Heartbreak

Remind me not to work on such a dark surface again! I do love working with the coloured pencils on Pastelmat, but the dark back ground is proving very labour intensive as I try to fill in all the dark crevices and leave a realistic skin tone. I think I'll stick more to the mid range coloured backgrounds in future. Next time, I might do as my blogger friend Sue , (the Pastelmat Master!), suggested and try a solvent with the pencils to see if this speeds up the process. I haven't played a lot with the solvents, since it is ineffective on the drafting film, but it could be beneficial for speeding up the process on this surface.

WIP - Heartbreak

This unhappy little fellow is my nephew Jack. The source of his hearbroken little expression? His ride on car had got stuck under the fence. Two year olds have such big burdens to bear!!! His mother, struggling to hide her mirth, managed to capture his anguish and I couldn't resist putting pencil to paper to draw his darling expression. This portrait is being done in pencil on Pastelmat as well, only this time I am using predominantly watercolour pencils. I read of a professional artist who only works with watercolour pencils, as a way of keeping wax bloom at bay. They also have a creamy texture that works really well on the Pastelmat, with minimal shine.