WHAT RESULTS DO WE GET IF WE USE THE SAME SET OF PENCILS FOR THE SAME IMAGE, BUT ON DIFFERENT SURFACES ?
I have selected a small pottery figure of a Welsh Slate Miner as my subject.
The procedure adopted was to transfer the outline of the image to the paper by a trace and then apply white pencil to those areas where the white or light shades were to appear. This gave a white foundation so that the later colours applied came out paler than otherwise. Where dark tones of colour were required, the greys were added after the main colour was laid down. In one or two cases solvents or burnishing were used, and in these I show the ‘before and after ‘ images.
For my second test, I selected some UART 800 grit paper. The number relates to the grit surface - the higher the number the finer the grit. The figure here took an hour to complete. The grit takes a good layer of pencil down, but it is not as easy to get fine detail. The image is only 3 inches high. I dare say I could have worked longer and put down more colour to give better shaping to the arm and base.
‘Somerset’ Black Velvet paper was the next test. This is much smoother than the grit papers and is very good for pastel as well. Well under the hour for this one, but you have to be particularly careful not to rub the light colours on to the black background with the heel of your hand as you work. Very effective and quick, but probably not a perfect example. I like working on black papers and the Somerset Velvet is a very good one. As well as being lightfast ( non fading ) it has a good surface.
This one on the left is on Stonehenge light grey paper. A very good paper for CP . Not too happy with my blending of the final layers, but I wanted to produce a comparable result for the time - within an hour. This took an hour.
For this final test, I decided to try an experiment, as I was having some trouble with final layers in earlier examples, so on a sheet of Canson 300gsm watercolour paper, I worked a similar CP base as in the other examples, but this time took a photo (1 on the left ) of the basic colour as applied. You will see it has many similarities to the other examples above in the layers are not as even as I would like. I took a hand held craft heat gun and warmed up the surface on the pad until the wax pigment was soft. I then applied a ‘bone’ tool to burnish and smooth the warm wax which resulted in a very much superior image. Any variations in the images above which possibly make it look like a different image are down to the photography ! I hadn’t tried heating the wax image before, and it has much the same result as water on aquarelles in making the colours more intense. I think that you do need to have the image on a pad or a heat retaining surface to keep the warmth in the area you are targeting. Worthy of more investigation, perhaps !
To sum up, all the images reflected the time taken but show the different results that can be achieved with the same pencils on different surfaces. If I were to do this test again today ( it was done several years ago ), I would also do an example on Pastelmat board, which is a specialist surface designed for pastel use, but which is smooth and holds a lot of pigment.