More colored pencil on clay

All were sprayed with PYM II to protect the surface.

My other love...colored pencil

What be this bee?
Read all the way to the bottom to find out about two giveaways.

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And welcome to Colored Pencil Magazine Readers, if you have landed here by way of the "Paper or Plastic" article in the latest issue. Here's how the article came about and why I decided on the project I chose...

A few weeks ago I received an email from Sally Ford at Colored Pencil Magazine asking me if I would be interested in contributing an article about using colored pencil on polymer clay. She had seen a few of my photos on flickr and my blog and thought her readers would be interested in learning more about the process.

So, of course, I jumped at the opportunity to share the love of clay with a whole new gang! I knew that colored pencil users wouldn't necessarily want to start making beads or sculptures or jewelry the way most of us clay folks do. But, they could replace their paper with clay for a different surface that has interesting qualities paper doesn't have.

I also wanted to introduce clay in a way that would complement pencil art and not require anyone to buy a bunch of tools to get started. I opted to feature Ultralight instead of "regular" clay for two reasons:
1) No pasta machine is required
2) The matte Ultralight surface works really well with soft colored pencils (Prismacolors, for example).

The digital copy of the magazine is available for subscribers today and the print copy comes out next week. It was a fun experience and I hope some of the readers give it a shot!

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If you're on Facebook, I would like to mention that I have an Artybecca Facebook page. Go on and Like my page if you want to follow along on my clay, and now, clay and colored pencil adventures. (There might also be an occasional appearance of pencil on Shrinky-Dink plastic and balsa wood shapes!)

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I came up with an easy project with instructions for the readers to try.
Here are photos of the pieces I made, before and after coloring:

I used an organza bag before curing to texturize the surface of this one. It looks nice but I found the colored pencils works best on a completely smooth surface. Before I tried it, I didn't think that would be the case, but it was.
The dark outlines on this one were made with liquid polymer, added after the first curing. I think it left a very slight residue on the surface that also caused the pencil to not lay down as dark as I wanted.

I couldn't leave out a turtleneck fish, could I? We'll call this one a flounder because he only has one side! I used acrylic paint to fill the lines on the fishie. I added it after the first curing and waited until it was totally dry to add the colored pencil. I sprayed the fish and the flower pieces with PYM II to protect the pencil.

No texturing on this surface, just a smooth, unsanded finish.

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I included links to Ginger Allman Davis's The Blue Bottle Tree blog where she has great information. I thought her posts about curing and finishing would make the readers feel more confident about trying the project.

• For questions about curing: http://thebluebottletree.com/bake-polymer-clay-oven/

• Polymer-safe finishes: http://thebluebottletree.com/pym-ii-polymer-clay-spray-sealer/

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Colored Pencil Magazine is sold as a digital download or hard copy by mail subscription.

You can subscribe to it here.

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GIVEAWAY!

To celebrate, I'll do a giveaway of two cute little bees I made using this technique. One is a fridge magnet, one is a lapel pin. Put a comment on the blog and you'll be entered in a drawing for one or the other. Please include if a pin, a magnet, is your first choice.

Here's one of the little bee dudes!

And wait...there's more! 

Coloring with abandon

My friend told me about art abandonment (google it) and I've been making items to give away ever since. My weapon of choice has been colored pencils on balsa wood cutouts for the last few weeks.

Mixed Media

The other day I did one of my usual "scribed" designs on a circle of clay but the color needed a little boost so I pulled out the colored pencils and touched it up. After I colored it, I discovered that the waxy colored pencils buff up to a lovely satiny shine. So then I decided to make a design on plain white clay and color the whole design (I had already scribed the design in, covered it with Pearlex, cured it, and sanded off the Pearlex using my usual method. Shee how I covered a bead with the Pearlex: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artybecca/4925713644/in/set-72157624802328426/)

This was white clay underneath. All the color is from colored pencils.
I used Spectracolors. I don'think you can buy them anymore...
my set is a box of 100 I've had for 20 years.

Above and below is on white clay.

This one was made of colored colored clay and I added
colored pencil on top, then buffed it.

I used a coiled wire on the back as the loop for the choker wire. I baked the colored top first, then applied raw clay to the back and pressed the coil into it. I put a thin strip of clay inside the loop and pressed it into the coil to strengthen the bond. Then I trimmed the raw clay using the edge of the cured clay as my guide. I cured the whole shebang again, then colored and buffed it.

Shrinky Dinks...new to me!

Maybe everyone already knew this but I didn't! Last week a new attendee, Debbie from Morgantown, introduced me to the wonder of colored pencil on Shrinky Dink plastic. I have been in experiment mode since then.

It is thin, strong, and lightweight with a nice surface texture on both sides -- the pencil turns into a matte finish and captures a surprising amount of line detail...color neatly! The non-frosted side ends up very shiny -- almost like a coat of satiny resin.

The really cool thing is that after you bake it (325 degrees for the shrinky plastic), you can back it with polymer and bake at the polymer temp and it bonds with the clay. No glue or liquid clay needed. It seems like you'd really have to use some force to separate them. However, I don't know what, if any, long-term reaction might come into play between the polymer and plastic. If anyone knows, please leave a comment.

A regular hole punch in the plastic before baking shrinks down to a perfect size for button holes or for jewelry wire to pass through.

If you bake with the shiny side up and then embed the matte side down in the clay, you end up with an image behind a glossy finish. Make sure you don't touch the glossy side before it's cool so you don't make marks in it.

It's not a fast process because you're drawing and filling in a larger image than the final size. But it's another fun tool in the kit for making delicate but strong jewelry components.

I am very impressed by how strong the plastic is.
That little teeny piece of eyelash that extends out is not in danger of breaking.
I went very light with the colored pencil on this first one so it remained
very translucent.

I colored too dark and lost detail.
I added more colored pencil on this after baking to insert some highlights.
I realized that this technique would benefit from white outlines rather than black.

You have about 10 seconds of working time to bend the plastic after it
comes out of the oven. I baked it on a 5x8 index card so I could just bend
 the card into the curve I wanted. The plastic clung to the card and took on
the curve. I wish I would have done this one with the shiny side out. I used
thin permanent marker for the black lines and turquoise
colored pencil for the background.

As you can see, this design is similar to the one above.
I drew my original design on a piece of paper so I wasn't
just winging it and I would have a template to use again.
The plastic is clear so it's easy to trace any pattern.

The frosted surface is lightly textured and is a fantastic base for the pencil.
 I also tried graphite drawing pencil and it worked just as well (though the
shiny side turns out nicer than the matte side). I determined that rounded
corners shrink more uniformly than square ones. I cut the polymer
flush with the surface of the plastic and pressed it onto a
swirly texture stamp to add decoration to the back.

I left the mitten above and the fish below unbacked with clay because the color looks good
on both sides and I didn't mess up the shiny sides when baking.

I draw this flower on a piece of paper and then used it as my "pattern" by
putting it under the plastic and using it as my guide for drawing on the film.
Even if you don't consider youself an artist, I bet you could sketch a photo
well enough to make a nice pendant or brooch.

Colored Pencil: Times Square

I took a bunch of photos in New York last month and some will become reference material.
I did this one from Times Square over Thanksgiving weekend.
Below is the original photo. I cropped it quite a bit to focus on the people in the center section.

  

I wanted to make the picture fairly large so I printed my reference out on 11x17 paper and gridded it off in 1" squares. I know, that's probably considered "cheating" but I don't have the time to invest in a drawing that's going to turn out dis-proportional! (I saw a "cartoon" by a Renaissance artist that had holes punched in it so his assistants could pat chalk through the holes to create the guidelines on the wall to help him begin his mural. If the Old Masters can do it, so can I!)
I put crosshairs on my paper at the intersections of the inch marks. I didn't sketch any outlines;
instead, I just laid down the all light and dark shapes and then fit all the rest in between, referring to my guidelines until I had the basic shapes of the entire scene in place.

Below is the original colored pencil drawing.

I wasn't crazy about the paper but it was the only kind I had on hand that was big enough.

There was too much texture and I couldn't get the color as intense or as solid as I wanted it. 

Problem solved with a bit of help from Photoshop! I played with the levels and brightness/contrast.

And then just for fun, I hit it with the Poster Edges filter. One way to deal with something you don't like is to make the "problem" more pronounced. I didn't like the original texture but after darkening and emphasizing it, it's kind of cool.

Virtual Paintout: Rio de Janeiro

My Virtual Paintout project for November. This scene can be found on Google Streetview here:

331 Rua Francisco Enes, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

 There seems to be graffiti on every building there.
It's hard to drop the Google Streetview Man anywhere and not find it!

Virtual Paintout: San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Here's my latest for Bill Guffey's Virtual Paintout. So many beautiful flowers everywhere you drop the Google Streetview yellow man! I went with colored pencil this time.
This scene can be found by clicking here.