Demo: Surfaces and Pencil Types
Lesson 7 from: Getting Started with Colored and Graphite PencilsMary Jane Begin
Demo: Surfaces and Pencil Types
Lesson 7 from: Getting Started with Colored and Graphite PencilsMary Jane Begin
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Demo: Surfaces and Pencil Types
I did do some testing on the traditional watercolor paper. And it was really kind of exciting. Okay Kenna, so you need to choose a color that I'm gonna play with. Alright, how about we go back to red? Okay, so we will test with a water based red and we'll test with, we'll go over here to a wax based red. (pencil scratching) Now you can clearly see, and I used here water plus the texture because it's water color paper. So it really did an interesting thing. It almost looks like stone. And here I just did what I'm doing now which is just straight on dried pencil on the surface. What it does is it, just like the Faber-Castell, I mean the Fabriano or the Canson pastel paper, this tooth picks up the color in a really interesting way. (pencil scratching) So I will now graze on top of that. Kind of orangy tone. Wax based, and orangy tone water based. And I'm trying not to mix the two because the water based, you can mix them but as soon as you add water, the wax based, the wax is not goin...
g to move. I can add water to a wax based color and it's just gonna sit there. It's not designed for that. So you can layer on this sort of surface. It's almost like if you did a rubbing, a stone rubbing. It's really interesting. I don't think everybody would like this surface because there is a resist, but I think it's quite lovely and a really fun variation especially if you use the water based pencils. You can add water or not and you're working with the tooth of the paper. And you can see, here is the Blick colors, here's the Faber-Castell, and the Dow Art. And I've done some different testing, both with water for the water based pencils and without. You can get a really fine grain if the point of your pencil is like a needle. If it's thicker like it is right now on these pencils you get a wider, fatter mark, and more white between the texture or color. But this is actually Arches coal press paper and it's wonderful. I've mentioned this in my watercolor class. Arches is the best water color paper ever invented. It's beautiful and this is a hundred and forty pound which is kind of middle weight. 300 pound is the thickest and 90 pound is the thinnest. But this is kind of in between weighting. I mentioned the Fabriano and the Faber-Castell. Excuse me, I keep saying that. The Fabriano and the Canson paper. The two types of pastel paper. You can use the rough side, which I've done here with the colored pencils. I want to start blending with white. I'll show you that. So if I have white on the surface. Again, this is the watercolor, water based pencil. And I'm gonna add, you can do a fair amount of blending with this, but you are gonna pick up the tooth of the paper because it is fairly textural unless you press really, really hard. If you press very, very lightly, let me use a color that you can see better, you're gonna pick up that texture. Again, that's really just a matter of do I want that, do I not want that. That's personal taste. I've tested over here the Blick wax pencil, Dow Art watercolor, and a Faber-Castell. No water was used with any of these, but it's a fair amount of texture to this particular surface, unless you flip it over and use the smoother side and it's a little less textural. And the same is true for the Faber-Castell. Let's try blue. This is wax based. I'll do a larger mark so you can really see. Again, these papers have a lot of tooth and a lot of texture. Unless you sharpen your pencil really fine, let's do that now, and you can see it, unless I break the tip which (laughing) The odds of that are always very high. You know you have to be careful and keep it really verticle when you're sharpening your pencil you're gonna break off the tip. And that's very frustrating when you keep sharpening it down to a nub. That's a pretty good point. So you can see, now my mark is a lot finer. This is the same tool, but all of a sudden once it's sharpened it's a lot finer on this surface. (pencil scratching) versus this. There's nothing better or worse about either, it's just depending on what you want, or how big your drawing is, or how much texture you want in this surface. These also come in a variety of colors which I love. So working against color with colored pencil, is really fun. That's why I highly recommend trying that. Now I wanna try this very strange surface which I tested with our pastels. It's called UArt Premium Mounted Board. And I guess it's a matter of taste. If you touch it, it's like sandpaper. I can feel that resist. I don't mind that. Some people not to crazy about it. But it's designed to handle all kinds of media. And I did some testing of the Blick waxy kind of coloration with the white, and then I'm gonna blend some blue into it. (pencil scratching) And it's pretty flexible. (pencil scratching) (blowing) And actually makes the color sit right on the surface. (blowing) Which is kind of strange because most papers don't do that. This is not like a regular paper. It's almost like drawing on sandpaper. You can also get, which I showed you here, this is one of the watercolor, this is actually, no this is the Blick okay. (pencil scratching) That color's sort of sitting on the surface. Almost like pastel. I can actually blend it more easily than any other kind of paper that I have here. And I had a little bit of dark color on there so I just neutralize my purple. I'll use a different finger. So the other thing I want to show you is the water based pencils on the surface do a really interesting thing. (pencil scratching) Because the surface is so toothy, it's letting all that color sit right on the surface. It's not really absorbing in. It really looks like watercolor more than any other papers surfaces. This is a new material to me. I think it's a fairly new material period. And I found this to be fascinating in that you could get really textural color or if you're using water based pencils and you want to wet them, it really does move that color around in a way that doesn't make the paper pill. The Bristol smooth pills a little bit if you get too hard with your pressure. This is a hefty kind of surface. You can also use, and do really interesting line, or super, super fine line on this. Let's do a wax based. But it does show a kind of tooth, very much like I showed you before. It almost turns these color pencils into mini pastels. So it's very interesting, very unusual. I have it marked here, UArt art board. But I rather liked it. And I think it all, it's personal taste. But this is a fun one. They come in small pieces. This is half of the size it came in. You could buy one piece and test it.
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