It’s been such a challenge to finally finish my latest book, Found. One of the last tasks was to add color to my drawing for the cover art, but the piece sat on my worktable for a whole week, waiting patiently for the gentle touch of my paintbrush. It never came.
Instead, I finally got out my colored pencils, deciding to finish it that way. Somehow, painting seemed so difficult with all those little flowers. I thought colored pencil would give me more control. And it did—but that was only part of the story.
Since I’d originally intended to use fluid acrylic paint, I’d prepared the drawing for that. I’d sealed the graphite with a workable fixative spray, glued the drawing to a piece of heavy mixed media paper, and then covered the fixative with a layer of acrylic matt medium. (I’ve found that transparent washes of fluid acrylic don’t stick very well over just the fixative.) So, how would the colored pencil work over all that?
Not as well as I would have liked. The brush I’d used to apply the matt medium left strokes with small ridges which the pencil wanted to skip over. It wasn’t horrible, but it just would have been better to work with colored pencil directly on paper.
Nonetheless, after several layers of colored pencil and finally some pen work to define things better, I was pretty happy with the result. I might like it better cropped shorter, but when I get to creating the actual cover, I’ll try that and see what I like best.
Meanwhile, despite some frustration with the colored pencil, I’m inspired to work more with it and learn to make better use of this medium.
By the way, I’m using Castle Arts pencils which I’m liking very much. They go on smoothly, and the color range is wonderful, especially with the set of pastel colors and the set of subtle colors.
But back to the book for a moment. The main characters of Found are mice - Evangeline and Oliver. And it's a love story. I usually refer to my books as animal fiction, and that is what they are. But, especially with this one, I realized the stories fall into categories regardless of the fact that the characters aren't people. And this one is definitely a love story. It will be available soon, in hardback, paperback, and Kindle Unlimited. I hope you'll be inspired to read it! I predict you'll see yourself - or someone you know - in the story
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