8 thoughts on “the Beasts of Glimmerglass: the minotaur of many colours”

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  4. Just love how you’ve drawn these beasts, they look very much as if they just emerged onto the paper like this, they look so right. The coloured textures and markings on their skins are so beautiful, you really demonstrate how interesting coloured pencils can be, I’ve never used them much but you’ve inspired me

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    • Phil, I started using coloured pencils this year, when making the maquettes for The Soldier’s Tale. After that I used them at the easel for an image of the soldier and princess that was titled Flight, and I was impressed by how well they handled. (In the image only the figures are done in coloured pencil, and the background is pastel.) Apparently even oil-based pencils have wax in them, but the ones that are less prone to bloom have a higher ratio of oil. From what I can find out… and I had to hunt around for clear information as the leaflet enclosed with the pencils gives little information… Polychromos have a reasonably high oil content, which means there’s less risk of ‘bloom’. Not the cheapest brand on the market, but the quality of the product is exceptional. I recommend these pencils.

      This LINK has good basic info on the technical aspect of coloured pencils, including Polychromos. You can check on it for which brands are wax-based and which are oil-based.

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      • PS. Looking at the drawings again this morning, I’m reminded of the grainy quality that the now defunct printing technique of ‘stone lithography’ lends to the images in Kathleen Hale’s Orlando the Cat books. The crayons were applied to stone that had a granular surface (or in Hale’s case, after the first book, on a plastic equivalent to lithographic stone) and the roughness meant that when printed, the colour was peppered by the paper showing through, creating a glittery effect that I find very attractive.

        The same thing happens with the coloured pencils on paper. The slightly rough surface… and even the smoothest paper has some roughness… means that the colour is held only on the ‘peaks’, while the ‘valleys’ show white through the drawing. The white reflects light, and that makes the drawing shine.

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        • Thanks For the tip Clive, I only need half an excuse to go to the art shop and I’m keen to try these – I’d always used the wax based ones before so I’ll experiment with the oil based ones; I’ve got an idea to use them with some of the painted collage papers I make to collage with as I’m trying to get some different qualities to the works I’m doing at the moment

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          • I’d be surprised, Phil, if you find that much difference in the way the oil-based pencils feel in the hand. It’s more to so with how the chemistry works. The colours don’t feel in the slightest bit oily. With pastels the difference between oil-based and wax-based is huge, but in pencils, it’s not really noticeable.

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