i did a quick watercolour (first) and gave it a coat of fixative so i could try out layering oil pastels on top for a mixed media look (second), but I’ve hit a few challenges:
- the oil pastels are very opaque and happily fully obscure the watercolour under them very very quickly
- the fixative has reduced the absorbency of the paper so the pastels are staying greasy and moving around very easily, giving me wonderful nuance and also no control somehow at the same time
- my original value plan was loose and crappy and had little contrast to speak of, not a strong place to start
- and watercolour has, naturally, such incredibly dark values compared to oil pastels, that i can’t get them both in the same range whatsoever. i dug too deep into the darks, as it were.
- also i had very little plan to speak of and a pretty terrible drawing, so this was maybe doomed from the start
so likely I’ll toss this now and move on, but it has taught me a fair amount of interesting technical facts, which i plan to remember, and also reminded me of some basic truths about planning, drawing, and values, that i would like to remember but will probably ignore once again at some point in the near future.
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