Drawing on black paper with pastel pencils, coloured pencils and other dry media

There's something very special about black paper. The dark background makes drawings instantly pop. This is the latest one I completed, using pastel pencils on Clairefontaine Paint On black paper.

There's a learning curve to drawing on black paper though. For one, you need to learn how to fill in colour negatively, meaning that instead of drawing in blacks and leaving the white spaces, you draw in the whites and leave the black spaces. 

Secondly, black paper tends to absorb some of the pigmentation, so getting colours to remain bright on the paper can be a challenge. One method I use is to pick colours that are lighter and brighter than what you want. For example, if I want a light ochre, I might use cream instead because the light ochre pencil would appear a darker ochre on black paper.

For this reason, I love using pastel pencils on black paper because pastel pencils are higher in pigment compared to coloured pencils, and show through better. Even light colours can go on top of darker colours as long as I don't saturate the paper with too many layers. 

This is a progress photo. I love drawing animal eyes. Once I managed to get the brightness of the eye, I knew this drawing would turn out fine.

The beak was quite challenging, had to wrap my brain around leaving it black instead of colouring it in!

Final drawing. Hoo you lookin' at?

Coloured pencils also can create dramatic looks on black paper, though a little more subdued. I have a Canson black drawing paper pad and use it as a sketchbook of sorts, to experiment using various dry media on it.

I find that this paper is best suited for coloured pencils. It isn't very good for media that require more blending, as compared to the Clairefontaine Paint On paper. Here's drawing of a crow I did recently:

And another of bluebells. As you can see, the black paper tends to suck up the colour, so I needed to compensate by using the brightest blues I had.

I also tried using wax crayons (Caran d'Ache Neocolor 1) on it - same problem with pigmentation. This was a very quick sketch of my friend's cat. My technique is basically: when in doubt, throw colour at it lol.

I tried oil pastels on this Canson pad too. That doesn't work. It's very hard to blend oil pastels on this paper, the pigment doeesn't spread and it can't take many layers. This was my best attempt with oil pastels but there have been many failed ones.

I love black paper and am considering doing a whole series of animals on it. But finding the right black paper is important and for now, I'm liking Clairefontaine Paint On paper, especially with pastel pencils. I will update if I try any others.