Different media on black paper

Another page in the Hahnemuhle Black Book.

The small knapweed sketch made with metallic gel pens certainly stands out on the black background.  Colour choices are limited, but I did add a bit of coloured pencil for the brown base of the flower.

I was going to use watercolour crayons for the cape primrose, but they weren't opaque enough against the dark background, so I reverted to gouache plus some watercolour to get the colours needed.

I have only a small selection of pastels and pastel pencils and must admit don't use them often as I can't get to grips with their fragility as a sketching medium. However I do admire the work of artists who use them well, particularly if not over-blended.  In the rose image, I also used Derwent Drawing pencils which are a soft, wax-based product, available in very muted colours.  To me they feel very similar to pastels.  I did use a fixative on this sketch which appeared to dull the colours slightly.

Amaryllis

I am always amazed how a scruffy looking bulb in a small pot can shoot up within just a month to such a beautiful, graceful flower.

Neopastel, Neocolour II, gouache, acrylic ink and Inktense pencil

April sketch group

Yesterday's meeting took place in Town Gardens - a Victorian style park in the old town area of Swindon.  Threatened showers cleared to give us a reasonably mild morning with some welcome glimpses of sun.  I had previously sketched the ornate bandstand here, so decided to try the Aviary which houses quite a variety of exotic small birds.

Town Gardens Aviary - fine liner pen, Pentel brush pen and watercolour crayons
on Hahnemuhle Grey Paper

I was trying out some newly acquired watercolour wax crayons and am not really happy with my efforts.  The background trees were far too bright, so I scribbled over some black crayon and was able to try out a scraffito effect to add a bit of texture.

I definitely need to practice with these a bit more to achieve better results.

I was impressed with the sketches by this artist pat.southernpearce and wanted to attempt something similar.

Test colours on tan paper (Paperchase sketchbook) -
water added on the righthand side

Colours tested on Arches wc paper - white crayon has been
added over the six colours at the bottom which has muted
 them slightly

Printing experiments

I have been printing a couple more fold books for birthday greetings (similar to this one).

I had some leftover gesso to use up and experimented with combining it with some Caran d'Ache Neocolour II water soluble crayons.

The gesso was already tinted a creamy orange.  First of all I coated my foam stamp with gesso then quickly scrubbed over crayons in reds and purple.  The result was a bit patchy, so I tried lightly dampening the stamp, adding the crayons, then gently adding the gesso over the top.  The latter method seemed to result in a better impression, but a bit more experimentation is needed.  I could have used just the crayons, but the addition of gesso sets the image should I need to work over it with other media.