Soft Chalks on Acrylic Ground for Pastel... or How to Relax With a Bunny Portrait

I have been enjoying some colour blending and thought I'd share. It's very relaxing.....

I guess it's no big surprise that I'm a bit of a STAEDTLER fan. I think one of my favorite things to play with to relax are their Karat soft chalk pastels.

I've been playing with them for ages. They're my go to feel good medium. I especially like to play if I have added some grit to my drawing surface. I use Golden acrylic ground for pastel to give my surfaces tooth. It's kind of like drawing on a fine sandpaper. The eye sketch above was the first time I used the two mediums together. It was about eight years ago? in Toronto at a course given by Golden to art instructors.

I usually add some colour to the acrylic base. This time I added a metallic pink.

I secured my thick paper to a flat surface until after this prep coat dried.

I like to leave brush strokes and I usually don't mix the paint up completely. I think added texture and colour make drawing more interesting.

I've added some colour and used a dry, soft, flat brush to blend the chalks into the background.

After the chalks are all filled in where I want them to be. I add some black lines to define the shapes. This time I grabbed my black STAEDTLER Karat watercolour crayon and scribbled onto some scrap paper.

I used my Heinz Jordan series 681 needle point brush to pick up the colour.

This is an awesome brush! It holds loads of paint and has the teeniest tip. I can paint forever without reloading and still get fabulous detail.

Here are some of the steps I took while blending out the chalks. There was no plan so there was nothing to stress about. I just played.....

Seriously addictive!

I think I need a series of bunny folk for the hallway now.