Wax Bloom

A really terrible quality, overly pink, washed out scan of the start of my latest drawing:

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 8.5 x 14″

Since the pastelbord is too long for my scanner, its unable to lay flat on the scanner bed, so you get that awful shadow running up the middle of the scan. Ah, well – I’ll have a photo of it posted tomorrow after my next session with it.

 This is the first time I’ve used Pastelbord; I ordered some to try out after seeing some folks recommend it on a thread on Wetcanvas. If you’ve never used it before, its very much like drawing on a fine grit sandpaper. Its taking some getting used to, to be sure.

An interesting thing that can be done on this surface that can’t be done on Mi-Teintes or Illustration board is working dark to light. In fact, it seems to work better. I’ve been putting down layers of peach or nectar and then going over them with cream and white and it works perfectly. And speaking of layers – wow, they go forever on this stuff.  I’ve only put an  hour or so in with it, but I can see I’ll be restocking. Heck, I even like the smell of this stuff…difficult to describe, but if you’ve ever been in an oil painters studio, it smells like that.