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Creating Pastel Sketches on Black Paper | Sketchbook Hack.

Postcard No 43: Life by the River

I’ve been wanting to add some pastel sketches to my Life by the River series and I want to keep them in an actual sketchbook as a collection rather than loose scraps of paper. Sounds simple doesn’t it but it’s actually hard to source a pastel sketchbook with interleaved paper to prevent the sketches smearing. I have tried a new fixative that works really well at stabilising the surface and only darkens the colour slightly if the base paper is a very light colour BUT it makes a huge change if using a darker paper. Of course I want to do the sketches on black paper!

My solution was to buy a spiral bound black sketchbook and custom cut galsine sheets to stick to the top of the page so that I can use both sides of a page when the book is open and have no problems with smudging. I’m happy to say it works a treat.

Cut glasine to fit inside page

Attach acid free double sided tape to top of right side pages

Sketch book with glasine attached at top .

And here’s my fist pastel sketch in my new sketch book.

I like the black paper becauze it makes the colours really pop and helps get the shadows in as well.

This was done using Prismacolour hard pastel sticks because the paper is very smooth and isn’t going to allow for lots of layers.

Today’s postacrd is really a bit bigger than my others as I got carried away and filled the A4 page!

This White Heron is often hanging around the Sedge Boardwalk where we go most mornings. Today the sky was looking a bit dark behind the trees and it made the sedge look much warmer .

This one hasn’t photographed very well…it’s not as flat as this but it’s late and I don’t want to go back outside to the studio and take another one !

If you have a different way of keeping your pastel sketches from smudging I’d love to hear.

Responses

  1. Catherine Bond Avatar
    Catherine Bond

    You might look into Clainfontaine’s Pastelmat pads. They are not spiral bound but do have interleaving paper. The dark color is anthracite. Pastelmat also grips the pastel really well and would smudge less. Probably not at all.

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    1. lindywhitton Avatar
      lindywhitton

      Hi Catherine, Thanks for your suggestion. I know where to get my hands on the Clairfontaine Pastelmat pads and they are a great paper but I was looking for a pad with a lot more pages which is why I went for this option. These are just small sketches and I’m happy to do fewer layers because I’ll be taking the ones I like best and working them up into much larger paintings on Art Spectrum Colourfix paper which also holds many layers. Pastelmat is a great grippy paper and I think you’re right that it smudges much less than some others. I generally prefer Colourfix because it has such a wonderful range of colours that really suit the Australian landscape.

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  2. Neutrals and Blues: Pastel Sketch by the Huon River – Lindy Whitton Studio Avatar
    Neutrals and Blues: Pastel Sketch by the Huon River – Lindy Whitton Studio

    […] for this postcard. I love the neutrals in this set and they work so well with the black paper in my pastel sketchbook. It was missing a really dark blue so I dipped into the Jack Richeson Blues set as […]

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