In between my Procreate tutorials, I try to stay “grounded” in the real world by painting in analog too! One of the things that stirred my curiosity was, “Can we introduce pastels in mixed media too?” Well of course we can! In particular, I was interested to see what else we could use Pan Pastels for apart from pure pastels drawings. Enter U.K. mixed media artist, Katie Moody, whom I discovered whilst googling, drawing my attention to her YouTube video. And what an eye-opener it was!
Although Katie mainly paints landscapes, I opted for animals in this exercise. Starting of course with what else but a ginger cat! We start of by a painting using brush pens, preferably something not too saturated. I thought Ecoline brushpens were ideal for this. After letting the inks dry of course, lightly applying Pan Pastels smoothed out all the streaky lines from the pens and added some dimension to the work. Result is a misty but velvety finish. And now, to add small details, enhance and bring back the inks which got dusted over by the pastels, going over with the brush pens is not recommended. The nibs will get damaged. We best use colored pencils for this. Good thinking! And now, moving onto my next practice:
How about some fish in a glass dome? This did not turn out as well as the cat painting did, but it was merely an experiment. That said, I do like the sheer appearance of the water, achieved by using a very light-colored brush pen and lightly sponging over it with a slightly iridescent Pan Pastel. The whites of the bubbles were further enhanced with a white Uni Posca Pen after erasing out the pastel in that area. And to illustrate which media I went for:
I do wish Ecoline brush pen would come up with one complete set comprising all the colors. When buying in small sets, sometimes you come up with an overlap of colors thereby getting duplicates. Oh well, good to have some spares. As for colored pencils, Katie uses Caran d’Ache’s Luminance which I don’t have and hence I stuck to what I already own, Staedler’s Ergosoft. All the drawings were done in Strathmore’s Sketchbook for Watercolor. And now looking forward to practicing more and hoping to paint some beautiful flowers!
My Kawaii Quarter 