Colourfix Paper Review
What is Colourfix?
Art Spectrum Colourfix™ Paper
'Printed on 300gsm hot press watercolour paper and with its dense, lightfast colours and fine deep tooth, Colourfix™ is a superb substrate for acrylics, inks, silverpoint, oil pastels, gouache, watercolours and dry media such as soft pastels, charcoal and pencils. The natural toothy surface will hold multiple layers of pastel without the need for fixative, allowing the velvet bloom and vibrant colour of pastel to be preserved. Erasing is also easy with Colourfix™ - simply lift off excess pastel with clear adhesive tape, brush off with a dampened or dry brush, or use a pencil eraser. Alternatively, errors can be overpainted or areas touched up with the matching colour of Art Spectrum Colourfix™ Primer. The tough, toothy surface can be sanded, scrubbed, soaked and reworked over and over'
Information taken from the Art Spectrum website:-
COLOURFIX
A favourite choice for Coloured Pencils - Karen M Berisford
For many many years I have worked on a heavyweight card for my Coloured pencil pieces, normally with a weight starting from around 200gsm - the reason I found for this was heavier papers allowed more applications and the thickness would hold the excessive pressure I applied to my pieces as I built the Artwork up - however, a fellow Artist trialled the Colourfix paper for the use of her Soft pastel pieces, enjoyed it and sent me a couple of sheets to try too. Out came the pastels and the paper but I found it a little heavy and so gave up, tucking the spare sheet away with no plans to use it again! So, a couple of years later, one spare and useless sheet of colourfix, I decided to try the Coloured pencils on it after reading that it was also suitable for the CP's too, and I found it to be a very strong contender for my favourite choice of paper for Coloured pencils.
Below are 2 very rough images of a Tiger's Eye, both done with the same pencils as each other, but the right has been completed on the 220gsm cream card and the left on the Sand coloured Colourfix paper.
Below are 2 very rough images of a Tiger's Eye, both done with the same pencils as each other, but the right has been completed on the 220gsm cream card and the left on the Sand coloured Colourfix paper.
Colourfix
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220gsm Smooth Card
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You can see that the details on the Tiger's eye on the right appears smoother than the colourfix one, this is an effect I like to recreate and is the reason I have always used this weight of paper, however, the Tigers eye on the colourfix paper to the left, allows multiple applications of colours onto the paper, allowing whites to work into blacks, an impossible task with Coloured pencils on most papers, but very important when you are creating a beautiful animal such as the Tiger which has a lot of whites,blacks and terracotta tones very close together.
The downside of the Colourfix, due to the coarseness of the surface, it wears pencils down a little quicker than normal, in my opinion, this is a negative I can live with as the vibrancy of colours you get from Coloured pencils are made even more vibrant by working on the colourfix paper, which I have found is lacking on some highly recommended papers such as the USA's CP Artists favourite paper 'Stonehenge' - personally, for me, I just found it far too soft.
The downside of the Colourfix, due to the coarseness of the surface, it wears pencils down a little quicker than normal, in my opinion, this is a negative I can live with as the vibrancy of colours you get from Coloured pencils are made even more vibrant by working on the colourfix paper, which I have found is lacking on some highly recommended papers such as the USA's CP Artists favourite paper 'Stonehenge' - personally, for me, I just found it far too soft.
Below is another Tiger I begun a while back in Coloured Pencils on White Colourfix. The right side shows the first tonal layer of colour I always start with, the left side shows multiple layers of pencils including the white on black (!!!) I also use fixative during layers, as this allows me to apply even more layers over the top, even creating a textured surface too!
Note the strong white tones on just one application
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This Snow Leopard was produced on Black Colourfix. The effects are wonderful for light coloured subjects such as the Snow Leopard - ideally it is easier to work light to dark, but on black paper you find you will work a lot more with the lighter tones, and find that the subject appears more effective.
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