More Fur and Feathers

Trying three different types of medium on three different types of paper. Because I love to experiment and get bored doing the same thing.

First up, oil-based coloured pencils (Derwent Lightfast and Faber-Castell Polychromos) on Strathmore Gray Scale Paper. I've been struggling with this paper as the texture doesn't play well with coloured pencil. I thought I'd give it another try by using the reverse side which has a finer texture. You can read my detailed review of this paper.

This zebra was drawn on the reverse side. I think the final drawing turned out quite nice, but it's not enjoyable working on this paper. It saturates quickly so that after just a couple of layers, you get a slick surface and it's hard to add more pigment.

 Next, Derwent watercolour pencils on Canson XL Watercolour Paper (I did a review of these watercolour pencils). This was so fun (and quick!) The watercolour pencils glide on easily with great colour payoff and the paper grabs the pigment well.

Finally, I did yet another kingfisher, this time using pastel pencils on Strathmore Pastel Paper. I've been itching to try out pastel pencils, so I bought a 24-pencil set of Stabilo CarbOthello. 

 

I LOVE it. It's less painstaking than coloured pencil and hence kinder on the hands. A big plus is that you can layer light colours on top of dark, something that's a big challenge for coloured pencils. There's a learning curve though - the colours get muddy easily and gosh, the smudges! No matter how careful I was, every time I lifted my hand, I found new smudges on a different part of the paper. There's a smudge on the top left corner here which I can't erase :( Between Covid-19 and pastels, my hands are raw from all that hand-washing.

There's a dreamy look about pastels as you can see from the drawing of the kingfisher. On the flip side, they're not great for details or creating a shiny look, so I used coloured pencils for the beak and eyes. But I do ♥ this drawing very much.

All these artworks are for sale, with 80% of proceeds going to charity. You can see the full list of my artworks for sale.