Ah, the adventures in my studio...
I started a new piece this morning. I had my drawing on a piece of tracing paper and I was ready to transfer the lines to my Pastelbord. I inserted my transfer paper only to have an oops moment. Without thinking, I had inserted a piece of white transfer paper but darn it all, the Pastelbord is white. Just wasn't going to work...okay it was early and I hadn't even brewed coffee yet. Now the real problem sets in - I don't own any graphite transfer paper. I have never needed any. When working on white paper, I am able to use my lightbox to transfer the line drawing but as this is a board, it isn't see-through.
I needed a plan B. I grabbed my Wolff's 2B carbon pencil and I created my own graphite transfer paper. I rubbed the carbon pencil over the back of the tissue paper and voila! Worked like a charm.
About this piece: it is on a 5 x 7 inch panel of white Pastelbord (which has a sanded surface similar to pastel paper). While some of my work is small in size, I don't normally work this small. I purchased a package of four 5 x 7 inch Pastelbord panels so here I am doing a rather small rose blossom. The finished size will be smaller than 5 x 7 as I am saving room around the edge to allow for framing. I have read that people using the white Pastelbord don't like it, especially when compared to working on the other available colours of Pastelbord. So far I am enjoying working on it. The only negative so far, is that I find it harder to keep the areas that I want left white clean (especially when compared to working on Stonehenge paper). .
I like it when the tooth of the paper shows through in a work and I do like the toothy nature of this sanded surface. I am applying the pigment in the old fashioned way in that I am just laying down layers of coloured pencil. In this piece I am not filling the tooth with the use of Neocolors II crayons, watercolour pencils, solvent or colourless blender. My goal is for the the tooth to remain visible. Already I find that this adds to the delicate, soft look of the piece. I am using Prismacolor Lightfast pencils.
This is a fun piece for me as I like working on white objects. This may be a white rose blossom but by the time I am done with it, it will have quite a bit of colour. I 'see' so much colour in white :-) ...for those of you who have taken the Beyond the Basics course with me, remember the white tea cup and cloth project? I have a white peony blossom in the header of this blog. Further evidence that I love to add colour to white!
As you can see from the top photo, I am working at establishing my darker values first. I intend to crop the piece more on the right than the left so keep in mind that compositionally, the image will change.
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