New work added

I’ve been doing slightly more complex work lately, in colored pencil, which is a very slow medium. I have a chip on my shoulder about colored pencil not being a “fine art” material, but I really enjoy its subtle qualities. I love layering colors to get some luminosity, I love creating fields of color, and I love that the cleanup involves putting pencils back into their boxes, tins, and drawers. I recently acquired sets of Derwent Lightfast pencils and Caran D’ache Luminance, both made with archival pigments. One is an oil based pencil (Lightfast) and one a mix of oil and wax based (Luminance). Because I am an art supply junkie I also bought the 120 set of Faber Castell Polychromos pencils (oil based), most of which are lightfast, and filled out my collection of Prismacolors (wax based) with only lightfast pencils from their range.

Honestly, I prefer the Prismacolor to all other pencils. They have quality issues: the lead is not fixed with binder to the wood casing, and the leads often break and come out of the pencil in chunks. They also are notorious for wax bloom. But their laydown is so smooth, the leads don’t shred (pieces of color breaking free as you work that need to be blown away) as much as other pencils.

That said, it is wonderful to work with archival-quality materials. And since I have been a no-show at my studio, I’ll be using colored pencils and maybe some watercolors for the nonce.