Good afternoon everyone!
I trust you all had a wonderful Christmas, and hopefully didn’t go too crazy on the food. I had a wonderful Christmas. I couldn’t make it home to my family. So instead I was invited to spend it with my roommate’s family. It was a very lovely Christmas. And I truly felt welcomed into their home.
If you follow me on my Instagram you will know that I recently brought new paper to try. I brought the Fabriano Artistico hot press 140lb. I have previously used Bristol Smooth, and Bristol Vellum paper. When it arrived I compared it to my vellum, and the Artistico is a lot creamier than the Vellum. However after a little bit of research I discovered you can get varying degrees of white. I think next time I will also get extra white.
So I decided a horse portrait of my horse Lexi would be perfect to test this new paper. She is a beautiful big orange girl. The cream paper really worked for her horse portrait.
Horse Portrait Test on Fabriano Artistico Paper

The paper is a lot more textured than I have been used to. I learned with my schnauzer how to use a coloured pencil blender effectively. “Zest It” is the product I use. After laying down a few layers of colour I use zest it to get rid of the white paper underneath.
After that it’s just a question of layering the hair on top of each other.

As you can see from this photo, the artistico paper is a little creamier. However I found with the horse portrait that it worked really nicely.
This paper was really nice to work with.More work on it however to fully decide and try different techniques on the paper. I think you will need to use some kind of pencil blender, to make it work for you. Just so you can get rid of the white showing through, and still obtaining the ability to build layers on top.
If you would like to keep up to date with my pet portraits you can do so in a variety of ways. Facebook is your guy if you would like to connect on a more personal level and look into my daily life, along with tips. If you are more interested in regular artwork posts then instagram is the one for you. Speed drawings and videos are available on my youtube channel.
If you are interested in having me draw a commission for you, here is an article about my new SALE.
Pet Drawing – January 2018 Special