CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

Hello all, Golden_Griff here needing your help.

For my drawing assignments this coming year I'll be working primarily with charcoal. I also decided to try my hand at Soft Pastels. However, I'm not too familiar with Soft Pastels to know about all of their strengths and weaknesses. Could someone give me a description of this medium? Will pastels work together with charcoal? How do you handle pastels? etc.

Also, I want to use some sort of professional art markers to color my drawings with (no offense against Crayola lol) possibly prismacolors or something like that. What papers would prismacolor markers work well on? Would you recommend some other type of markers (i.e. copic)?

Any help/comments are appreciated.
~G_G

I'm a little on the charcoal-phobic side, I find the medium is so difficult to control and it dries my hands out so badly. And I tend to be messy enough with graphite, let alone when you load me up with a very dusty, very shattery medium

But in the right hands, charcoal can be excellent, and it's good for larger scale works and figure drawings. I definitely like soft pastels better than charcoal, though they do tend to be rather dusty and smudgy (which can be a good or bad thing). Or are you talking about oil pastels? Oil pastels and oil sticks are fun

Have you considered using colored conte? I personally love conte, due to the fact that it's smaller and it has a harder, more permanent mark. I'd be interested in using it with normal pastels..I'll have to think about this a bit more before and I'll definitely go a dig out the markers that were recommended to me at college last semester. I'm afraid I can't remember the name right now

As for paper, we typically were told to buy bond paper or mayfair I think..

the_lizardqueen wrote:I'm a little on the charcoal-phobic side, I find the medium is so difficult to control and it dries my hands out so badly. And I tend to be messy enough with graphite, let alone when you load me up with a very dusty, very shattery medium

But in the right hands, charcoal can be excellent, and it's good for larger scale works and figure drawings. I definitely like soft pastels better than charcoal, though they do tend to be rather dusty and smudgy (which can be a good or bad thing). Or are you talking about oil pastels? Oil pastels and oil sticks are fun Have you considered using colored conte? I personally love conte, due to the fact that it's smaller and it has a harder, more permanent mark. I'd be interested in using it with normal pastels..

Naw, I've handled the oil pastels before and if memory serves me correctly, I didn't like using them. Then again I had no clue HOW to use them. Charcoal makes me want to wear a mask, but I found that I work best with charcoal than any other medium (I'm too tight with graphite and conte I just hated ). The reason why I like charcoal is, well, in the words of my professor, "Charcoal is more forgiving" .

I'll have to think about this a bit more before and I'll definitely go a dig out the markers that were recommended to me at college last semester. I'm afraid I can't remember the name right now

As for paper, we typically were told to buy bond paper or mayfair I think..

Hmm...bond paper ....I may have some of that from a previous class but I'll have to go check to make sure that's the same paper. As far as mayfair, never heard of it.

I can't say much about either medium, but if you are going for soft pastels you might want to try Prismacolor Nupastels. They're quite firm and don't shatter or crumble, at least not easiliy.

For markers...hm. I don't use those all too much. Maybe watercolor paper will work, or vellum.

Prismacolor NuPastels? hmm....

Charcoal is definitely messy, but it's fun. I'd love to see your work, when some of your assignments are done!

Oh wow, thanks!

So um, will pastels and charcoal work together in harmony? (Forgive me, but I don't know if that question has already been answered ).

They can, if you want to forgo the black-and-white of the charcoal. In my experience, chalk pastels seem to gravitate toward smoothness more strongly than charcoal, making it sometimes profitable to use black pastel in conjunction with charcoal for certain things. Of course, the real test is whether you like the effect, but it can be done very nicely.

Hmm...alright

So wait, another question: I've heard of both chalk and soft pastels. Is there a difference?

Not really, but I suppose you could probably refer to hard pastels as a kind of chalk pastel. (the hard ones have more binder - kind of like harder graphite in pencils. Less dusty, but also less colorful.)

Well, the basic answer is "not really."

Ah ok. Thanks for the help everyone