ONLINE ART COURSE – COMPLETING THE PASTEL PENCILS MODULE, THE FIRST SHEET OF PEPPERMINT TEABAG STAINS, AND COLOURED PENCIL UPDATE

Pastel Pencils Self-Directed Challenge – Facial Features

This afternoon I finished this challenge at last. It’s been a busy couple of weeks, what with being ill and getting my new glasses and various other activities, and I did want to start sorting my coloured pencils too.

The final two facial features of the challenge were the nose and mouth, which I completed this afternoon.

Here is the complete set.

On the whole I’m pretty happy with the result. Initially (as always!) I thought this was going to be really hard to do, but it proved not to be too much of a problem at all.

Having got a bit behind, I’ve decided to forego the “rest week” (the final week of each module) and move on speedily to the next module, which is ink pen and watercolour. My hubby is going to join me again for this one, which is great. I love doing art together! He’s got a relatively quiet week so I hope we can crack on with this without too much delay.

Completed first sheet of peppermint teabag stains

I pulled the final teabag off this sheet this morning and am very pleased how they all turned out! So random, so varied. The results seem to depend on various factors – how wet the teabag is to start with, and how scrunched up it is when you put it onto the watercolour paper. All these are useable.

I started another sheet today, and immediately the tea stain spread way beyond the teabag – it was obviously much wetter than usual! It has made the most gorgeous pattern, and I’m looking forward to pulling it off when it is dry, to see whether the actual bag has made a pattern or not.

I’m now feeling very much better than I was last week, although my energy levels remain low and my sleep is very poor. Onwards and upwards!

Coloured pencils

Very much looking forward to another Amazon parcel arriving tomorrow, with a nice case for my latest set of coloured pencils.

Yesterday I completed my swatch sheets. I have created three columns: the first for my original set of 72 Derwent Coloursoft pencils, the second for the new Faber Castel Polychromos (36 in the set), and the third for the set of 72 Amazon Basics pencils. I tried to line up colours that matched as closely as possible, but with the Amazon Basics, in some cases more than one seemed to match with the others so I’ve bracketed these together. Quite a few sheets! I’ve written the colour name and number beside each one.

Here’s a single sheet for a closer view – the blues and greens.

The Amazon Basics are amazing – a huge set for a real bargain price, and they seem to work very well. They are wax based so are softish, and good for blending, but not nearly as soft as the Derwent Coloursoft pencils which in my opinion are much too soft and mushy! The Faber Castel Polychromos, being oil-based, are harder, but they are fabulous to use and seem to shade and blend very well. These are the ones recommended by the teacher of the online art course. Being a set of 36 I think I can more or less cope with them in their existing tin, but the Amazon Basics ones are in two layers, with a removable tray which is somewhat flexible – I can see all the pencils careering off all over the place unless I’m extremely careful! The same was true of the Derwent Coloursoft pencils, and I bought a nice little zipped case for them which has worked very well. Amazon still sells this case in several colours, so I have a pink one arriving tomorrow – a different colour so I can tell the sets apart at a glance.

I also have a set of fine Posca paint markers arriving. These are acrylic markers, something I have wanted for some time. They do different thicknesses as well but I thought for highlighting and outlining, and for adding text to mixed media pages, these fine ones would be ideal.