Get the Most out of Your Pastels with Canson Mi-Teintes Paper (Pastel Pads and Touch Pads)

Pastels are a wonderful medium to work with. You only need to look at Degas’s sublime use of pastels in his ballerina paintings. You can work them delicately or with boldness and the colour is always powerful. The pure pigment in artist’s quality pastels is a pleasure to behold. It is a pity then to use poor quality paper on which to paint. I have tried many papers over the years of varying quality. Recently I tried out two pastel pads from Canson. Their Mi-Teintes pastel paper pads and Touch pads.

Life happened… art didn’t. Some tips to get you back in the saddle.

As some of you may know from a previous post of mine, I have only quite recently (over the past year) rekindled my love for creating art after a gap of about twenty years. Not twenty planned years of taking a break from art, but just twenty years where life happened… and art didn’t.

Caran D’Ache – Pastel Pencil Luxury

We all have our Achilles heel and I’ll admit that art supplies are mine. It’s therefore quite fair to admit that I probably didn’t need the Caran D’Ache Pastel Pencil set I bought. Well, that is until I had used them. It is now quite fair to admit that I pretty much cannot do without them!

Tombow: Mono-a-Mono Zero

Having a favourite pen is pretty normal, but it might seem bizarre that some creatives can even become obsessed with smaller, seemingly less significant tools of the trade such as rulers, sharpeners, and (today’s topic) erasers!

Goldfinger Makes Gilding Great Again

You have to hand it to Daler Rowney for coming up with a brilliant name for their new gilding paste. For those of you who remember Sean Connery and the Goldfinger movie the link will be particularly appealing. But Daler Rowney have made Goldfinger the hero this time and rightly so. For the first time, I actually look forward to gilding. Let us take a closer look at this useful product.

Versatile Inking: Pigma Micron PN

Newly stocked, and quite a new product in South Africa in general, the Sakura Pigma Micron PN differs slightly from the standard, beloved Micron range.

A chat with Contemporary Portrait Artist Chaz Williams

I find other artists and their stories very insightful and inspiring and I was therefore very excited when contemporary portrait artist Chaz Williams agreed to answer a few questions.  I think his predominantly oil portraiture work is fascinating and have been following him on Instagram for quite a while.  The arty Capetonian started taking his art a little more seriously when a ‘little Mandela sketch’ he did, ended up selling for more than expected after a local portrait competition.  He is very involved with charity and regularly auctions off artwork in favour of various charities.

Brilliant Gouache Painting with Winsor & Newton

There is something vaguely nostalgic about painting with gouache.  I could not quite explain it until I realised that I had painted with gouache before as a child.  The powder paint I used to use as a child was a type of gouache and is still available today.  But the name is about all that is the same when compared to the paint I am using now.  They are still paints in much the same way as a Trabant and an Aston Martin are still cars.  In every other respect, they are entirely different.