Pelican Encounter

Spent a relaxing 10 days snowed-in in Florida this winter. Another story.  

It was fabulous. While our home was pummeled with ice, rain, wind and snow we relaxed by a pool and took walks by the ocean.

 

Which leads to my new project, a striking portrait of Mr. Pelican. Actually, I have no idea of the sex. It might well be Ms. Pelican for all I know. I do know this bird-person took no guff from anyone. Stood its ground and proclaimed its independence.   

So Mr. or Ms. as the case may be, will become my next art project. 

My preference for tinted paper has lead me to explore many supports, and today I am trying a new one.  

Start of the drawing,
Image transferred and first layers of white and black

Colourfix Plein Air Painting Board made by Art Spectrum in Australia. I choose the blue haze tint, because it closely matches the sky in my reference photo. It is a heavily textured board, feeling like fine sandpaper. I have noticed already that it has a tendency to be smeary, which makes sense as it is designed for dry media like pastels and charcoal. Having the ability to smear and blend are important for these media. How it will respond to colored pencil is another matter.  

The support I am using is the 12” x 16” size. Matted to 16 x 20 it should make a good presentation.

 

As usual with Colored Pencil I did my first drawing on tracing paper, making what adjustments and corrections I needed, then using graphite waxless transfer paper, I transferred my Pelican to the Colorfix board. I traced lightly so I had very faint lines. This is necessary because I could already tell erasing was not an option on this board. 

You can see the tint of the board here and how it will serve as the background.

As I said, this board has the texture of fine sandpaper, and it does have plenty of tooth to hold many layers of colored pencil, which is good because it will need it! 

This time I did not start with a layer of watercolor pencil or graphtint, or ink tense. I usually to this, especially if I am working on a dark support. But I decided to see how colored pencil will perform on this surface.

 

So here it is so far: