A different approach to colored pencils

 

I painted this magnificent seagull using an oil based colored pencil and odorless mineral spirits on bristol paper. This was a first. First for this brand of bristol paper, first for this colored pencil and a first for blending the mineral spirits with paper blending stumps. It worked beautifully.

Here is my work space. All of my colors and stumps selected. The pencils, a set of 48, came from Art n Fly. I ordered it from Amazon.com. 

Here's a close up of the pencils and stumps. 

I came upon this method of blending with stumps rather than brushes on an old YouTube crafting video. I was interested in seeing if anyone had used pencils and spirits for create a wash. I never found anyone but I did find a few crafters from a dozen years ago sharing the use of the stump and the oil and pencils while filing in their rubber stamp projects. It was brilliant, to the point and easy. They each drew in heavy lines of pencil within the inked lines of the stamped image and then used the paper stump to blednd the color out from the edges to the center. So cool.

I did a bit of experimenting and saw how easy it was but being a painter I needed to apply the technique to a bird or dog to see how it worked on a larger scale. I've been meaning to paint this seagull for a few years but never got around it to. I don't know if it was a download or one I took myself in California or here in Florida. If it was a download it came from Wildlifereferencephotos.com or Pixabay.com. I take a lot of photos of shorebirds here. But I digress. I drew