Welcome to Gaia! ::

There are some tricks for future reference:
1) One way to avoid accidental smudging
is to place a paper towel under the hand you
are drawing with. Or if you stand up while you
draw on an easel, you can find a long sturdy
lightweight stick and use your free hand to
hold it so you could have an "arm rest" for your
working hand.

2)If you have over-worked a part of your
artwork, ( as in put on too much pastel), you can
a paint brush to lightly dust it off, ( not too hard of
bristles or too soft), but you can use just about any
kind of brush. ( art is all about FREEDOM OF EXPERIMENATION!)

3)As for blending, you can use a variety of
things! for example:
-Q-tips
-cotton balls
-soft cloth/ paper towels/tissues
-moleskin(no not real moleskin)
-fingertip (obvious I know), and if you
don't want to get your fingers dirty you can either
wrap a small piece of paper towel around the pastel
piece where you'll be holding it.
-Torchon ( blendy stick/ it's that white paper
tightly rolled up)


4) one thing to remember with pastels is to
make sure to have fixative on hand so that you can
spray the work so it won't easily be messed up. Be sure
to read the instructions beforehand because fixative
can be toxic.





If anyone has any questions about art, just pm me and I will hel to the best of my ability.

Charcoal, all the way to Andromeda and back. Charcoal is the ideal medium for me, because my speciality is black-and-white realism, with lots of difference in lighting and plenty of different shades. I also love using my fingertips when I work, for smudging in particular.

I also love pastels and oil paint.

that's the trick, really. once you've got that down, you can start drawing! lol.

i prefer smudginess to the exact "you messed up here" nature of permanent utensils like inks, but i've gotten a lot better with my lines, if i do say so.

I think my pens might just hate me. either that or i have a subconscious need to mess up my line art by pulling the pen a little to far here, making an almost wiggly line there....

i think i sabotage myself xd

That's how I feel about pens... I kinda like using a brush and india ink... But I don't like the fact that you can't exactly erase any mistakes, only go over the area and hope that you didn't mess it up even more or get some white ink...Even the white ink doesn't work all the time (especially if you water it down a bit...)

Acrylics! blaugh

Oils seem great (apparently they take so long to dry) but I have yet to buy some as they also seem complicated- linseed oil? new brushes strictly for oils? eek

I also use colored pencil because it's easier for me then other dry media- you have a lot of control over it.

Pencils are the classic medium, and I love them because they are so simple compared to other media.

Watercolor: xp . No control. I have no patience; everything bleeds when I use them. I bow down to people who do use them, though.