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I studied Botany at school and have always been interested in flowers. I spent many years photographing them and still do, but oddly never drawn any, so thougth I would give it a try. This Iris is my first flower and I hope to add more. A larger image can be seen by going to the Gallery Page and selecting "Flowers".

The latest dawing portrays a keen football captain with a few members of his team practising their skills. They all seem to be having fun! Go to the Gallery page for a larger image and details of the paper used

The latest drawong portrays a studious German Shepherd author at work in his booklined study, with a view into the garden, with a few friends for company. Go to the Gallery page and select "German Shepherd Jobs/Hobbies to read my review on the paper I used.

A cheerful German Shepherd tennis pro shines amidst vibrant flowers and playful animal friends, capturing the joy and color of an amusing tennis match in the animal kingdom. Go to the gallery page and select German Shepherd jobs to see a bigger image and notes about the paper etc.

It was a real pleasure to be asked to participate in this issue of CP Magic! I really enjoyed working with Carrie Lewis on this issue. ​ If you haven't come across her yet she has a superb web site full of information, hints, tips etc. Visit here - https://www.carrie-lewis.com/ ​ Magazine available here-  August edition- - copy and paste into your browser https://www.carrie-lewis.com/downloads/cp-magicaugust-2025/

I am passionate about German Shepherd dogs and have lived owned one since I was 12. I wanted to try out my "go to"pencils, Faber-Castell Polychromos and Caran d'Ache Pablos and Luminance,with different papers for comparison, so decided on a  whimsical series of German Shepherd dogs doing various occupations/hobbies. I've added the first two to the gallery with details. Enjoy! If you have any questions, or a particular paper you are iterested in, pease contact me, and If I have stock [ I have a large range of papers] I'll use it for one of the drawings.

Saunders Waterford papers have been made in England, in Somerset, at St Cuthbert's Mill since the 1700's. It is said to be recommended for watercolours, gouache, acrylic, pastel, pen and ink, charcoal and pencil, so I thought I'd give it a whirl and see how it performed with coloured pencils. I would normally use hot pressed paper as it is smoother than cold pressed but I decided to try the cold pressed type. The paper is an off-white, cream colour, 300gms weight and 100% cotton. It is acid free, archival, sized with gelatin externally and internally. It is a thick paper, but flexible, and the surface feels soft to draw on. Each side has a different feel, the "right" side is rougher than the opposite side, which looks and feels smoother. I used both sides of the paper for the comparisons and used the pencil from the brands I use most often, Faber-Castell Polychromos, and Caran d'Ache Pablo and Luminance. This is the right side of the paper with 1-3 layers of pencil. here is fairly good coverage of the aper for each brand and lines are quite good. This is the other side of the paper, which is smoother, drawn in similar fashion, As you can see, the smoother side of the paper doesn't give as good coverage, due to less tooth. I then did a drawing using both sides of the paper and identical pencils,all from the Polychromos range. This is the "right"side, I labelled the petals with the number of pancil layers I used, and did one full petal with 5 layers of all colours. 5 layers gives reasonable coverage, but there is still plenty of tooth left to add more layers and compleltely cover the surface and leave no gaps. This is the other side of the paper, the smoother side, done is similar fashion. As with the initial test strips you can see that coverage isn't as good as on the "right" side as most of the tooth is covered with 5 layers. I really enjoyed using this paper and thought it handled coloured pencils well. One drawback I encountered was when I tested if for erasure and neither side worked well. Both sides looked similar, see below, and left a lot of colour on the paper despite how hard I tried to remove it. This factor would prevent me from using it as a regular paper for commissions. Like anyone, I make mistakes, and I need to be able to correct them easily. That said, I think this is a very nice paper with superb handling and quality build, and I would use it for other drawings. It is available in blocks, sheets and pads. It can be fairly pricey,depending on your location. I paid $80 Australian dollars for a pad with 12 sheets of 16 x 12 inches [410 x 310 mm]. By comparison a pad of Pastelmat, 30 x 40mm and 12 pages, cost me around $80-100 Australian dollars depending on the retailer. The pad sizes are, 10 x 7 inches [260 x 180 mm] 12 x 9 inches [310 x 230 mm] 14 x 10 inches [360 x 260 mm] 16 x 12 inches [410 x 310 mm] 20 x 14 inches [510 x 360 mm] The sheets come in the following sizes, A full sheet 22 x 30 inches [560 x 760 mm] A half sheet 21 x 15 inches [530 x 380 mm] The rolls come in 1.5 metres x 10 metres are ary in price, but I couldn't find one less than $400-$450 Australian dollars. At the time of writing 1 Australian dollar is worth 66 US cents.

I decided to try another bird painting and chose a photo of a couple of parrots. I used my preferred paper, Clairefontaine Pastelmat,and my usual range of pencils, Faber Castell Polychromos, Caran D'Ache Luminance and Pablos, plus some Holbein and a few others. I struggled with feather details and am not entirely happy with the result, and think I should stick with animals! The painting is in the Bird Gallery, but this is it.

I finished the drawing of the dog on this paper. So Who Has My Bone? Thanks again go to Maddin_1983-7205842, of Pixaaby for the image My final thoughts about using it with coloured pencils are mixed. I tried pastel pencils and it's extremely good, which is great since that is what it was designed for! I found while doing this drawing that it performs quite well with soft coloured pencils, such as Caran D'Ache Luminance, Holbein, and various Derwent pencils, but wasn't so good with the harder brands such as Faber-Castell Polychromos and Pablos pencils. The harder pencils didn't lay down as well as the softer ones and it took a lot of work to get the paper covered. Pastelmat works well with all the pencil brands I've used, soft and hard,including Verithin too, probably the hardest of all. On balance I think I prefer Pastelmat, and will have to accept the surface artifacts that seem to have appeared over time.

Information. Canson Mi-Teintes Velvet paper is available in rolls, sheets and pads. The rolls  are available in golden beige or graphite grey and are 15m x 5m in size. The sheets  are available in 14 shades covering a good range of colours, I would like to see a slightly brighter green and a pale blue in the collection, otherwise the colour range is very good. The sheets come in 50 x 65 cm sizes, roughly 19.7 x 25.6 inches, so are a decent size. The pads are available in two sizes, 24 x 32 cm/ 9.4 x 12.6 inches, and 32 x 41 cm, 12.6 / 16.1 inches. Bothe useful sizes, certainly for portrait work.   Prices vary depending on retailers and the country.   colours First impressions. The photo I used was from Pixabay, thanks to Maddin_1983-7205842, A very cute image of a dog with a baby soother in his mouth. I cropped the image, and as the paper is a cream colour decided to change the colour of the soother. I worked for a tad over three hours on it and this is the result so far, it’s just a quick snap with my iPhone I have to say that, so far, I am very impressed with this paper and the way it handles coloured pencils. There is some dust, as with Pastelmat, but less so. The initial noticeable difference was the smoothness of the paper compared to Pastelmat, and velvet describes it well. The surface is very even with no marks or artifacts anywhere on the sheet. It takes plenty of layers and colour rendition and laydown is very good. Working on the eyes, the fine details were easy to draw, much better than Pastelmat. Another thing I noticed straight away was, so far, it doesn’t smudge like Pastelmat does either. I find Pastelmat a nightmare for that. The image on the left shows a piece of Pastelmat with a triangle of Canson paper on top, from top to bottom there is one layer, 2 layers and 3 layers, with a Caran D’Ache Pablo pencil.  The Pastelmat with three layers is quite dark, whereas The Canson is much lighter, which means it should hold more layers before the tooth is filled.     I then used a Mono eraser to see how much colour I could lift from the three layer spots on both papers. The image on the left shows the results. It worked really well on the Canson paper, lifting all but the faintest amount of colour. A very big plus. As you can see Pastelmat wasn’t very successful at all, and very messy.        I then edit the images of the papers by adding high contrast to highight the surface texture. Ignore the colours,just compre surfaces. The Canson on the left looks quite even but the Pastemat looks uneven by comparison.                       When the dog portrait is finished I'll add it to the Dog Portrait gallery.

I recently purchased a pad of this new paper from Canson. Pastel artists seem to like it a lot, and many prefer it to Clairefontaine's Pastelmat. I've been usng Pastelmat for several years and it's a superb paper for coloured pencils, ideal in that it is possible to add light colours on top of dark colours,making it great for the addition of white whiskers on animals, rather than using other methods. However, Pastelmat quality has deteriorated over the last year and the surface is often uneven, has lines, marks etc, so I am going to try a dog portrait with this paper and see how it compares. I'll post my thoughts on it soon.