The other night I decided to change it up. I was unpacking some studio boxes and found my red stick tempera (Playcolor). Don’t know where all the other colors went. I enjoy using them when I go to the life drawing co-op, but that’s unfortunately been an age. (Maybe they are in my co-op bag?)
I’m working in that handbound journal I made with the now defunct Nideggen. I love that toned paper so much. Opaque paint just pops on it.
I found a cute dog on the Sktchy app and started by drawing an outline and filling in the background.
Were my shapes off? Well focusing on the negative space around the head I nailed it; but I had to scrimp on the lower body when doing the outline, to get that other foot in. (The dog was sitting on a rock so I’m not as off as it looks. But this is the type of thing I like to just accept, if it means getting that foot space on the page.
Then it was great fun to fill the inside of the silhouette with a simplified version of the pup—just working with shapes at a necessary value.
To help me with feature placement I’d put in circles where the eye sockets were and a nose position, but I didn’t want to “draw” the face. I wanted to work directly with the paint, just using shapes.
I used a medium sized filbert for 90 percent of it, and then when the edge wasn’t giving me the wispiness I needed at the edges I switched to an angled flat and just used the tip—I wasn’t at my drawing board so I just used the other brush I had nearby.
Leftover paint of course—some Irodori Gouache from Holbein, some Schmincke watercolors—all dried out on a palette plate, but of course fresh titanium white gouache (Schmincke). Such a lovely paint.
What will I find in the boxes next? Where will I go?
I only have seven spreads left in the book, but I always feel, when working on Nideggen that an adventure is just around the corner.
Pick up an art tool you haven’t used in awhile and start “in reverse” of what you usually do. If you work details—simplify; or vice versa. Limit your brush and color choices (sometimes just by picking up what’s at hand). Let your mind and your hand play. You might just find a whole new way of approaching what you see and how you can get it onto the page.
Commercially Bound Toned-Paper Sketchbooks
If you’re looking for a toned paper in book form I heartily recommend (but am not connected to) Strathmore’s 400 Series Toned Mixed media journals in tan, gray, or blue. It’s heavyweight paper that takes watercolor or gouache (or acrylic!) perfectly. (Color pencil, wax pastels: they are great on it too.) I like the 7.75 x 9.75 inch soft-covered journal. It’s right in my range for favorite working size of a journal.
Hahnemühle also makes toned paper wet media journals that I quite like, but the size I get is about 5 inches square. I use them for my purse journal since it’s so small and compact. Their tan paper is pretty pinkish which I love, and the gray is a sort of periwinkle almost. Both are fun for watercolor or gouache when you’re out and about.
The painting of the dog, on your favorite paper with the red background and perfect values, is a delight to behold and from your remarks a delight to do.
One question: what are wax pastels?
Glad you enjoyed this sketch Harriet.
Wax pastels is a sort of catch all category to which many brands contribute—they are art sticks with a wax base not an oil base. So oil pastels are what Picasso used, and are made with oil and can seep through paper that hasn’t been gessoed or prepared in some way to prevent this (painting on it a background of acrylic can often be enough). But I can’t use oil pastels because they seep through paper and the odor aggravates my allergies.
Enter a variety of wax pastels, often called wax-something and not pastels. It really depends on the manufacturer.
So Caran d’Ache has NeoColors which are wax pastels and not water-soluble, so they are very much like “crayons” only they have richer color and greater workability.
Faber-Castell has a stick of wax in a plastic holder that does the same thing.
Then there are the waxy water-soluble crayons/pastels and also “briques” or blocks. These you use as a solid and then can wet and blend them.
Neocolor II falls into that category. I use these often. They are my second favorite.
My favorite of this category of wax pastels is actually in a pencil and was called Stabilotones and came in 84 colors. They were discontinued and replaced by an 18 color line called Woody. (They did not continue my 2 favorite colors in the 18-color line so I can’t use them to make art much any more, though I haven’t used up my favorites, so maybe there are a few paintings left with them?!)
They are fat, short “pencils” filled with a thick wax-crayon sort of lead, but it is of course richer in color and very soft and blendable. I did a lot of work with these. Unfortunately all of the posts I could see in a quick search on the blog of “Stabilotone” shows all those posts are in the non-public archive. You can however see thumbnails and croppings of some of the images so I encourage you to enter that keyword in the blog’s search engine and scroll down and hit load more and keep going and you’ll see enough of them that you can see the rich coloration that is so great on toned paper. (Most of my work with these types of tools is on toned paper or on the prepainted backgrounds I enjoy making in my journal and for larger paintings outside my journal.)
Mungyo Watersoluble Oil pastels are a Spanish brand I believe. They are incredibly soft but I don’t know how blendable they are. They are also called “oil pastels” so I don’t know if they have wax in them or what—but they act like the water-soluble wax pastels I like to use.
Creative Impressions makes water-soluble crayons. I have no idea how they are.
Faber Castel makes a water-soluble crayon they call Gelatos—they are very smooth, but the colors are also very weak when diluted with water. Additionally they are short “lipstick” type holders and the “stick” is in less than 1/2 the length of the holder so they are very expensive for what you get. I can use one stick completely in a couple of life drawing sketches at the co-op. I do not recommend them.
Brands famous for making low cost “student” grade art supplies or children’s supplies typically have a watercolor crayon—like Sargent, and Crayola. I can’t write about those because they were not something that ever tempted me. They will be low quality and not have the application possibilities I want.
Hope this helps. There are tons of this type of product out there. Unfortunately my favorite, and the one most useful to my art, is discontinuted.
I do find Neocolor IIs are a reasonable replacement, though they are stiffer and more difficult to blend. Since you were on Patreon with me you’ll see me use that product in this portrait painting https://rozwoundup.com/2022/12/my-favorites-are-not-your-favorites-its-a-good-thing.html (But only a little, I shift to opaque paint.)
There is a short video at the end of this post https://rozwoundup.com/2013/01/three-days-in-wisconsin.html.
(There may be typos in that post it was one I left open for students but which was not “fixed” from the blog transfer in 2017.)
I use Neocolor IIs in that project and at minute 8:55 you can see the results of how I typically use them. (It’s a flip through so you won’t see the actual layering and blending, just the results.
These are not as easy to blend as Stabilotones were, but then we work with what we can find.
I hope this gives you an idea of the wide range of wax-based drawing tools available to you, some of which are waterproof/resistant, and some of which are water-soluble.
I wanted to give the “group” a shout out in today’s post because these tools work so beautifully on toned paper.
Harriet, this is part two of my reply to you, but it might appear before the big answer so check that out first.
After saving my answer I realized I forget to look up the other crayon I’m familiar with—Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Crayons. These are water-soluble wax crayons in a short pen-sized tool. My recollection is they come out by twisting. I tested them ages ago when they first came out. I find the colors from these sticks to be weaker than my preference. (The line is geared toward rubberstampers and crafters for a variety of uses and I think the colors match Holtz’s line of ink pads, etc.) They are labeled as having water-reactive pigments, but I would check some videos and discover more about them before you buy into them in bulk—I seem to remember they include dyes or are not that lightfast. I’m sorry it was so long ago I just don’t remember. I still have some of these and they are all in my life-drawing co-op bag. I like to start life-drawing sessions by using tools like this for gesture studies. They are very good for that.