Insight
At the moment this section gives a more detailed overview of what materials I use for my portraits. In the future I hope to expand this to include tutorials and also tips on how to create various effects with different media.
Materials
Paper
My preference at the moment is the smooth surface cartridge pad from Winsor and Newton at 220gsm. It ivory coloured and accepts graphite and coloured pencil well as you can get a very smooth finish particularly when you blend with tissues. I have also started using Winsor and Newton's bristol board sketching paper for my biro portraits. Pen works much better on a smooth surface and because this pad is clean white the drawing really stands out from the page.
Graphite Pencils
The graphite pencils I use are from Daler Rowney, though I also use Derwent and both types are good. I like them because they blend easily so that you can't see the stokes if you dont want to. They give the drawings a soft feel but also allow for sharp details..
Colour Pencils
For most of my drawings I use Derwent Coloursoft colour pencils. I find these are the most easy to blend and so they look great when you build up the colours. Most of the time I use them for detail as well as blending as they don't break when you sharpen them, but for the smaller A5 drawings I will use the odd WHSmiths hard pencil if I need to draw very fine lines.
Pens
I use black and blue biros, generally bic. I always test the individual pen before I start a portrait to make sure that the biro is not going to leak and that the colours match exactly even if it is the same brand.
Fixatives
I use various fixatives depending on what kind of paper or media I've been using. The main one I use for all graphite and colour pencil drawings is the Winsor and Newton Artists' Transparent Fixative. This provides protection for charcoal, pencil and pastel drawings and is specially formulated to reduce smudging and dusting. The one I use for biro portraits is more expensive but it includes UV protection which pen portraits do need to be coated with.
