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| NATALIE'S GOLDFINCH 14 X 17" On Bristol Vellum Colored Pencil , Ink , Graphite & Gold Leaf |
This piece was a request from my daughter for my grand-daughter's birthday in May. It was also my first experiment on Bristol vellum with colored pencils. I love working with the Faber Castell Polychromos, layer upon layer of shading and texture. It's a workout on the hands though! Micron pens .05 and .01 were used on the ribbon. The ribbon was a challenge, I actually had about eight hours into this piece before I put it aside and started over from scratch. The ribbon was just not working and there are a few things I learned in the process that I will put into practice when I include a tangled ribbon in future projects. Helen Williams' e-book available on her blog A Little Lime, was a tremendous help.
All shading outside of the ribbon, "N" and goldfinch was done with 2B, 6B and 8B graphite pencils and a paper stub. One thing I'd like to pass on and which was new to me; when using a blending stub it's good to sand the end frequently so the colored pencil doesn't build up on the end of the stub making blending of the graphite far more difficult. I couldn't help touching the edge of the colored pencil area as I was adding my shadows and noticed problems as I tried to blend the graphite.
Lastly, I just had to add some gold leaf in a few spots and was very happy with the outcome. Another word of caution about the gold leaf sizing on paper. Give it plenty of time to dry! If you smear it outside of the desired area you get to spend some really anxious moments gently removing it from the paper with an Xacto knife!
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