"Winter Wolf" 12 x 16" pastel on velour paper

"Winter Wolf"  12 x 16" pastel

I really enjoyed working on this painting.  It was the first time that I had tried my hand at using velour paper.  Velour paper is exactly how it sounds.  It is soft and fuzzy, just like the pant suits that my grandma Hazel liked to wear back in the early 80s.  Velour is not easy to work on however.  You can not do a pre-drawing on the paper, because you can not erase, and once that mark is there, its pretty much there for good.

The trick to working with out that very important value underpainting that  have come to count on is to do it on another sheet of paper to work out the details, then transfer it to the velour.  One artist recommended tracing her own drawing using carbon paper.  I tried tracing using this method and made a hot mess.  Ok, so that didn't work, now it is time to get extra special creative.

I often do my preliminary sketching on photoshop using my bamboo tablet.  I had to learn the tablet thing when I started illustrating kids books, and I am in the process of doing a book right now.  Naturally my brain put two and two together and I came up with an idea that works quite well.  I did a prelimary drawing, to size, on the tablet.  This drawing is also a value scale.  I can alter the color of this value monochromatic drawing to what ever I want, then print it, yes I said PRINT IT, right on the velour.  It is still my own drawing, it just transferred really well.  I have an artisan printer to make my own laser prints for shows, so I can print my own digital drawings up to 13 x 19" on any paper I want.  Problem solved.

Oh, by the way this is not my photo.  I purchased this royalty free photo reference from Dollarphoto.com.

I will tell you more about working on this crazy paper in a later blog.