The numbers are driving me insane....

OK I am not good with numbers. At all. Which can sometimes be a problem but as long as I go over things a few times (more like 20 :p) I can get things figured out. I was never good at maths and my maths teacher in grade 9 only passed me because he was sick of teaching me and seeing me draw on the chalkboard :p (His fault for seating me next to it ;) ) He really did tell me this lol (yeah could also have something to do with a game a few of us use to play in class, but in my defence I never started it :p)

The whole point of writing that is because I have spent the last 2 days going over forms for funding for College and am still not done with the maths parts :p But it will kill 2 birds with 1 stone because I can get my taxes for last year done at the same time :) So I haven't gotten a lot of drawing done, but almost finished the tattoo commission (had to redraw a part, wasn't hard and now it looks better :) ) and spent an hour working on the Foxgloves.

Copyright Jennifer Rose Phillip

So here is one bell pretty much completed. I really would love to darken up the inside of the bell, but the paper will not take any more of the pencil pigment and is actually going to start digging into the paper if I tried. So things I have learned so far with using this paper:

1. Make sure you put really strong highlights down even if not called for as it can be hard to get them over the other colours after they are put down. Much easier to just darken them later then try to lighten them. Light colours are really sucked into this paper and seem to fade easier.

2. I think the pencils actually act like chalk pastels on this paper rather then acting like they normally do. Its not a bad thing, just have to go back to using the pencils differently.

3. You do get a soft effect like with the white Stonehenge but it is more subtle.

4. I don't need to burnish, seems to happen on its own really fast with this paper. After about 8 light layers I started to see the slick shiny look and also started to have a wax bloom problem :/ So things are really shiny (and I don't mean in the Firefly way ;) )

This is good practice for me though as I normally do flowers that have very defined petals. Speaking of practice I am going to start drawing people. Shocker! ;) I need to start practising different perspectives to prepare for life drawing classes. Not sure if I will post them all, but will probably post a few so people can get a good laugh ;)