Black Prismacolor Pencil on Coquille Paper.

In this project we had to look for black and white images that struck our fancy and arrange them into a photocollage. We could use images from magazines or photographs from any source. A lot of my classmates came up with some very abstract compositions. My collage ended up looking like an illustration, which is no surprise since that is what I like doing best.

Once we had our images, we cut them out and worked on arranging them on an 11" x 17" white background paper. After a few sessions of class critiques everyone settled on their favorite ( and hopefully the best) composition. We glued the cutouts down to the background paper and made some high quality black and white laser copies of the collage.

With this full size reference we set out to render the image with a black prismacolor pencil to coquille paper. Coquille is a rather delicate paper since you have to be careful not to leave fingerprints on it. The oils from the skin mars the surface of the paper and shows right through the application of the colored pencil. Still the textured pebbly surface gives a unique quality to the rendering. Here is a close up look at a detail of the drawing that shows the surface better.