Paper Review: Shizen Design Pastel Paper

Typically when I buy paper, I use it for multiple purposes. Here's the results of my attempts to use this Shizen pastel paper:

First, for pastels, this paper does not work for hard or semi-hard pastels at all! They scrap off the top surface of the paper. Furthermore, if you try to blend harder pastels, it also tears up the paper. I then used some buttery soft pastels and that was okay, but again, I couldn't blend the way I like to, which is with my finger. In addition, the paper does not hold very many layers of pastels at all and you cannot spread the pastel around the paper at all.

Secondly, I love to use pastel paper with my soft, buttery colored pencils. This paper does not handle pencils at all. You cannot blend on the paper well, it tears it up. The pencils, yes, even the soft, buttery ones, literally scrap off the top coat of paper.

Then I went onto Inktense and Neocolor II just to see what would happen. This paper did not handle water well at all!! After getting the colors wet, the colors would not spread and blend like on every other kind of paper I've ever used them on and the paper literally buckled. So, nothing with water should be used on this paper.

Finally, I got out my pastel powders, the equivalent to pan pastels. They worked nicely enough, but again, using anything else on the paper, like your finger or a blender, messes up the paper, and it does not take but a couple of layers of pastel before the tooth of the paper is all filled up.

In my opinion, this paper is not worth the money. I like my paper to be multi-purpose, and I've always used colored pencils on pastel paper because I love the texture. The only thing I'd remotely think of using on this paper is maybe super soft pastels and pan pastels, but even those have limited use on this paper. Blending and multiple layers of pastels are nearly impossible. For paper that is so thick, it sure is very fragile and not very useful.

I am sad because I was looking forward to playing with yet another brand of paper. I heard that this company also makes watercolor paper. MAYBE I'll try that, but not sure I want to throw away any more money on this company. I have heard that they make professional watercolor paper. Still not sure I want to put out the money and try it after this mess. Sorry, but I did try. The only recourse I have left to try to make this paper useful is to try acrylics on it. Haven't gotten there yet, but I will soon enough.



Note: Sorry for not having any photo examples of my experiments on this paper. My camera was still  missing at the time and I had not yet gotten my new camera.  I will take photos when I try acrylics on it.

Update on Studio Set-up: Cubbie units for storing art magazines

Now that I have a new camera to take photos with, I can give you an update on the cubbie units for all my art magazines. I keep all my art magazines so I have literally years of magazines and I had no way of storing them. I had a wonderful friend, Helma, make me this cubbie and she did an incredible job. It's perfect! Now, all my magazines are organized by name and year, and they're easy to grab for information anytime.

Ignore the bookshelf to the left that is overloaded with art books. Yeah, I can't fit all my art book in there, so I have some stacked in front. That's another project.  And don't look at the three drawer storage unit to the right. Yet another project. One step at a time. Lol!

Review: Richeson Toned Gessoed Hardboard Panels - Part I

Recently I ordered several of the brand new Richeson toned gessoed hardboard panels that just hit the art stores, and yesterday they arrived. I spent last night playing around to see what these panels were really like.


Here is what the panels look like. They come in two colors: Mid Tone Gray and Umber Wash.  I ordered two 6" x 12", one of each color, and one 8" x 10" umber wash.  Dick Blick is having a special deal since these are a brand new item. You buy one size and color, say a 6" x 12" umber wash, and they give you a 6" x 12" mid tone gray for free! So I ordered three panels and I received six. Love that deal.

Note: Since my camera is still lost, I had to take these photos with my phone, and they are not very good. Unfortunately my phone does not read colors very well. I apologize for the quality.


First Impressions: 
After I got the plastic off the panel I ran my hand over it and was surprised at how amazingly smooth it felt. Remember it is a gessoed board. I expected more tooth than this.

The edges of the board are beveled, which is nice and it will fit into a frame quite nicely. It reminds me a lot of Ampersand's Hardbord, except for the beveled edges and the toned top.  Here is a close-up of the beveled edges.

Colored Pencils: 
Of course, the first medium I chose to try out on the panels was my favorite - colored pencils. I love to use my pencils on boards and panels of all types, so I was excited about trying this new board out!

I chose to just draw a simple circle. After 3-4 layers, I was just pushing color around and the tooth had completely disappeared.  Here it as, without being blended with a brush yet. I could also add light colors on top of darker colors without a problem.

So, after I blended with a bristle brush with a medium pressure. I did use hard pressure at times because the colors simply would not blend well together. As you can see below, a lot of the pigment came off rather than blending.

But there is one thing I have discovered. You can erase every last shred of colored pencil completely off the board! No sign that it was ever there. Also, if you like to use turpenoid to blend your colors, all it will do is take the pigment off the board rather than blend.

So, my conclusion for this part of the review, is that colored pencils do not work well on these boards, sadly. I was so looking forward to doing some CP paintings on these.

For the next review, I will try water color and watercolor pencils on these boards and see how they work. Then I will try acrylics and finally oils.

I hope you enjoyed this review and found it informative! Keep an eye out for the next one coming soon!

Happy Arting!

Organizing and Storing Art Magazines

How many of you have tons of art magazines stacked all around the place or in boxes, and you don't have any idea what to do with them or how to store them? You don't want to throw them out or give them away because they have great articles, demos, tutorials, and pictures that are incredibly inspiring. So, what do you do?

I struggled with this question for years, but I finally figured it out. I got some of those plastic stackable milk crates (the long kind that are about 12" x 12" x 17"). I have a lot of magazines of many different titles, so I needed at least five crates. I divided up all the magazines by title, then put them in order by date. I put the heaviest ones in the crates on the bottom such as International Artist, Art Collector and Western Collector. However, as I feared, magazines are so heavy, you cannot stack the crates directly on top of one another or the crates will collapse. As you can see in the photo above, the crates have warped and started to collapse. That was before I came up with the idea of putting wood in between the crates to add support.

However, what I really want to do now is build a six-cube case so I can fit six crates inside (one crate per cube), and then I don't have to worry about the weight of the magazines. My friend, who built my custom closet shelves for my studio, is going to help me build it. In the meantime, this method is working beautifully.  The wood is adding just enough support to keep the weight evenly distributed across the crates and helping them not to collapse.

Now, if I need to go looking for a particular title, or specific magazine, it is at my fingertips. No more cramming the magazines into boxes (have you ever lifted a box full of magazines?) and having to go through the entire box before finding the one I want - right at the bottom of the box. I am so happy with this method, and it looks so much neater in my studio than magazines (or boxes) everywhere.  Try it, you'll like it!

Pencil Storage

I am currently working on three different pieces, all in pencil, but neither are ready for a "work-in-progress" article yet, so instead I am continuing on with my little series on how I organize my studio (as per request by one of my readers). Today I am covering how I organize and store my pencils.

My favorite piece of storage equipment is my 120 pencil display by Prismacolor (in the photo above to the right)! I actually got that from an Ace Hardware Store. I used to work at one in N.C., and they do have art departments. Well, not all of them do, but I have heard of some that have huge art departments! The store I had worked at were cutting down on the number of pencils they carried, so they bought a new Prismacolor display with far fewer slots for pencils and so did not need the full size display any longer. I was able to buy the display complete with all the pencils in it that they could not display in the new case (about 300 pencils total) for only $30.00. Now THAT was a deal!

There is an Ace hardware on the Outer Banks that carried Carb-Othello pastel pencils and I loved to go there and restock my supply. I went one day and found out they were no longer going to carry pastel pencils and did not need their pencil display anymore. The manager actually gave me the pencil display - free! That's the little display case in the middle (to the left of the Prismacolor display). Unfortunately, no pencils came with the display. The store had pretty much sold out of their stock of pastel pencils, so no more pencils to buy.

All the drawers to the far left, next to the Carb-Othello pencil display, have more colored pencils as well as my watercolor pencils (Inktense, Neocolor II, Prismacolor, and Derwent), charcoal pencils, tinted charcoal pencils, and Graphitetint pencils. I have a little container of Prismacolor art sticks and some battery operated pencil sharpeners on the table top. On top of the drawers I have a few more pencil sets, such as Lyra Skintone colored pencils, Walnut Hollow Oil colored pencils (great to use on wood), and a woodless colored pencil set. In addition, I like to try new colored pencils to check their quality. I have a complete set of Soho colored pencils (which is a brand made especially for Jerry's Artarama) and Dick Blick colored pencils. The Dick Blick colored pencils are pretty good, though not  buttery soft like the Prismas. They're really more like Polychromos and they have a pretty good lightfast rating for most of the pencils. Jerry's brand I'm not as keen on. What I need to do is use the three primary colors of each brand and create a whole picture, then compare them side by side. Also, I have a few Pablos, and many Polychromos that I love to use, and the complete set of Derwent Coloursoft colored pencils. However, my favorite is still Prismacolor with Coloursoft and Polychromos a close second.

Finally, I have three pencils easels, each one carries approximately 125 pencils. One is for Prismacolor colored pencils, one for Polychromos and Derwent colored pencils, and the third for Derwent pastel pencils. These pencils easels are a great way to organize and keep your pencils, especially for quick and easy access. The easels are also very useful for travel or for plein aire drawing.

So, that is my pencil organization and storage! I hope this is helpful for some of you.