Friday, March 31, 2017

Trying Out a New Painting Surface



Experiment One: Above the photo and the completed acrylic painting of our nephew's gyrfalcon painted on a 10" square DaVinci Smooth Textured Pro Panel.

Today I chose to experiment with the DaVinci Pro Panels available here. The Gyrfalcon I did last week in acrylic paint for our nephew was my first trial with these panels. For that one, I used a smooth-textured panel and found the surface felt to my brush to be a tad "slippery." It's easy to paint over, paint on, and build up textures, however, so the slippery beginning didn't really deter me from completing the 10" square painting.

Experiment Two: Prismacolor Pencils on DaVinci Smooth Pro Panel

Here's my box of colored pencils ready to go! (Click on each photo to see an more detailed image)

And the progress of working in colored pencils on this new surface:




Upon completion, a coat of acrylic varnish was sprayed on. Several more coats will assure no smearing in the future!

While the process remains nearly the same, working light to dark in colored pencils, I learned that they do not blend quite as well on this hard surface as they do on paper. Even using the Prismacolor Blending Pencil, the colors don't really blend smoothly as they do on the softer surface of paper.

So I'm a tad disappointed in the results, but am glad that I tried the panels out for colored pencil. I like drawing in regular pencil on them, so I may consider doing some pencil drawings in the future on some of the small ones I bought for testing. But I doubt very much I will use colored pencils on this surface again.

Maybe tomorrow will be the day I try out soft and hard pastels on the heavily textured Pro Panels. Stay tuned for more experimentation!

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