Saturday, January 19, 2008

Sophia & Josh


After finishing a half dozen pieces with Prismacolor pencils on the Ampersand Pastelbord, I was still undecided about continuing to use the boards. The process of matting these pieces for framing makes me a bit nervous, because of their weight and thickness. I haven't been able to find any guidelines for the best way of doing this, so I've resorted to what I would have to call a "Mickey Mouse" method, which involves lots of framer's tape and odd bits of matboard for support... an untidy mess hidden on the back side of the artwork and mat. If anyone has a good system for securely matting these boards, I would love to learn about it!

Anyway, I wanted to do this portrait of my niece and nephew together, but did not have a Pastelbord large enough on hand. I used a toned sheet of Canson Mi-Teintes pastel paper instead, and, while I'm pleased with the result, I really missed the toothy surface and the sturdiness of the board.

Materials aside, with this wonderful pair as my subjects, I have no complaints!


9"x12", Prismacolor pencil on Canson Mi-Teintes pastel paper

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for visiting my blog, Liz. I appreciate it very much. I like your drawings. You seem to have a way with smiles. Even the eyes you draw smile!I think I like the one with your youngest grandson the best. Then I think, the sun and cat.
I look forward to seeing more of your work :)

Unknown said...

Liz- I bought a point driver to secure the board in the frame. It's simple. Then you can put the paper backing on the frame and voila! I love your work, by the way.

Elizabeth A Patterson said...

Thank you, Maryann! And I look forward to more of your blog posts. I enjoyed the one a while back that featured you as "La Befana"!

Hi Deborah, and thanks for the framing suggestion. My problem is really with hanging the pastelbord in a mat before framing. Have you ever matted it?

Gillian Mowbray said...

Love their sweet, dimply faces. A beautiful portrait.
Not sure about the framing problem but if you have any tips for sharpening Prismacolor pencils I'd like to know. Wretched things break in a sharpener and I'm useless at using a knife!

Elizabeth A Patterson said...

Gillian, thank you, and they are just as sweet as they look!

About the Prismacolors; I use an electric sharpener... carefully! It works fine for me, except when I get one of those pencils where the lead is already broken into pieces inside the wood. That makes me crazy!

Ron Morrison said...

Excellent portraits all, earlier ones ioncluded. Its hard to get them to look like kids I see so many that look like seventy year olds that are size challenged. Yours are very good.