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! :)

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.