Working with Colored Pencil Powder

As many of you know, I prefer a background for my botanical drawings and paintings versus the traditional presentation on a stark white page.  Working with colored pencil on colored papers presents some fun challenges and great color effects which I continue to explore.  I wrote about this in a previous post Black is Fascinating.

This piece is rendered with colored pencil on Canford Mocha colored paper.  The value of the paper is ~50%.  I added lighter values with whites and pale colored pencils as there is no "white of the paper" for these effects.

For the background, I chose several Caran d'Ache Pablo pencils since they are more opaque than other brands and have lots of covering power.  I grated them against a fine-mesh tea strainer into powder form.

Making Colored Pencil Powder

Powder Grated into Wells of Watercolor Palette

Next, I masked the positive areas to keep them clean during the background lay-in.  The masks are simply paper cutouts weighted down with various size hardware washers to keep the cutouts in place.    (I avoided taping them down, or using frisket masking film, because the plate-smooth paper surface is easily marred by even the lightest tack found in these products)

Paper Masks Weighted with Washers

With the masks in place, I freely worked the background with my chosen colors (from bottom up, dark to light).  I dipped a dry filbert brush into the colored pencil powder, and drew/pushed the powder into place.

Applying Powdered Colored Pencil

Lots of powder remained on the paper surface; so I pushed it further into the limited paper tooth with a cotton pad. I applied a few layers in this manner - adding color with the brush and smoothing it with the cotton pad - until I was satisfied with the result.

Cotton Pad to Push Powder Into Paper Tooth

The finished piece...

Fruits from Rain
(Wine-cap Stropharia Mushrooms)