Conte crayons follow up

Katie Jeanne Wood 
Halloween masquerade mask 
Mixed media portrait drawing
Conte crayons & oil pastels

This is a follow up post about the Conte crayons I wrote about last week. If you missed those 3 posts, just scroll back to find them.  

The solution to my issue of the watercolor paper showing through wasn’t an easy one. I ended up having to go over each of the 10 masquerade drawings with oil pastels, which took a few days.

I tried using a wet brush to smoosh the Conte crayons around to fill in where the paper was showing through, but all it did was lift the crayons off the paper on to the brush. I had more white of the paper showing through than before. 

These photos show the drawings redone with oil pastels over the top of the Conte crayons. I’m not sure if it’s because I had already sprayed these with a workable fixative or if it’s because oil pastels over the top of Conte crayons are not easy to work with..but building up layers with the oil pastels was nearly impossible. I couldn’t get the pastels to layer or blend as I normally do. 

Don’t get me wrong, I like these drawings. However, I still wish I hadn’t used Conte crayons on them because it created nearly a week of extra work. I’ve decided I did the best I could, and I need to let it go. It’s necessary to experiment, and step outside my comfort zone, I keep reminding myself. 

I think Conte crayons would be perfect for making marks in my abstract paintings or when I’m just playing around in my art journals – which I should have done first to test them out before committing to ten drawings. Oy. Lesson learned. 

I still plan on drawing a portrait or two on drawing paper with them sometime. However, since this mistake cost me days of precious time, I’m not in a big rush to use them again. I need time to lick my wounds. lol In the meantime, I’ll be happily drawing with oil pastels. 

If you want to purchase any of these masquerade mask drawings, they’re available in my Etsy shop or eBay, whichever you prefer.