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Thursday, September 8, 2011

New Stuff

The mail lady brought a box from Dick Blick today!!  Inside were several new colors of Prismacolor pencils, and the Derwent blender and burnisher. I'd read somewhere that they were very good, so naturally I just had to try them.  I opened the box right away, sharpened all the pencils, filled in my color chart and started experimenting. I used two kinds of paper one smooth and one with more tooth.
Initial impressions:
  • burnisher produces a softer look, I like it better
  • blender moves the waxy pencil color around a lot, actually sounds different when it comes in contact with the paper's surface  
  • blender gives a more scratchy, textured look
  • used in combination, not much different than the blender used alone
  • I like the burnisher a little better than the Prisma blender
 I'm not sure how much detail will show in the scan, but some results are shown below.
Oh and colors!  I just love the new greens that I got. Kelp green 1090, green ochre 1091, kelly green 1096, and artichoke 1099. Artichoke is almost not a green, kind of like one of the greens in camouflage and I know I'll use it alot.  I also got blue lake, clay rose, grayed lavender, and chestnut. The rest were replacement colors.  This brings my total up to 95 colors. Do I plan to get all 132? No. I'm not into just "collecting." I buy what I think I'll use.  Have you seen all the colors of gray there are?  There are 19!  There's no way I'd use all of them.  I have about 6 grays, an assortment of cool  and warm.  That's enough, for me anyway. My wish list has about 10 colors on it, and that'll be enough for me.
A trifold, using up scraps of Japanese paper.
Not one of my favorites, too..symmetrical or lined upish.
 Nature Geisha.  The Japanese maple leaves are from trees in our yard, as is the ginkgo leaf. I made some paper out of recycled junk mail a while back, and I still have quite a stash of it.  This one has Japanese maple leaves embedded in the paper.

This is an old optical lens I got from an optometrist who retired. (before you could buy them commercially). I dug out my stash the other day and went to work.  The tiger is colored with Radiant Pearls, glued to a piece of silk paper then glued to the lens.