July 15, 2016

Roger Waters portrait - frustration limiter

Recently my bloody computer crashed. Guess which system? I'm having an ordeal repairing the unruly beast (it's not a run of the shelf machine, but one tuned to DTP and 3D). While waiting for processes to finish I started doodling Roger Waters to limit the measure of frustration.

What I found out during this frustration limiting process, is that the surface of the dirt cheap office copying paper works quite well for both airbrushing and working with (opaque) colour pencils and that it allows to combine both techniques perfectly. However, the paper is very thin and in no way suited to any erasing that goes beyond using smooth and soft erasers (let alone scalpel or fiberglass erasing techniques). So this unplanned project has me searching for the proper type of paper - with a smooth, but not too smooth surface - and oil based colour pencils that would make the portraits water resistant and light-fast.

The tool I used for this rush portrait are: Iwata CM SB, Inspire H2O, Caran d'Ache Luminance colour pencils. I watched a number of Youtube videos and I concluded from that that Faber Castell Polychromos pencils may be what I am looking for. They are similar to Caran d'Ache Pablo oil based pencils, but significantly less expensive. I will try them in the near future and post my experiences with them in this blog.

Oldest stage at the bottom, newer one above that.