I LOVE my Stabilo pencil

OK, so what is a Stabilo pencil? It is a water soluble, rich, black pencil that you can smear with your fingers, blend with a wet brush or just draw with. If you use it to draw, say a face, then paint it with acrylics, all sorts of nice shading happens almost magically. These pages are in my art journal that I use to do demonstrations for a class I teach at the St. Louis Artists Guild every Monday morning. I will start a Saturday morning class in June so watch for info on that or check the guild website.

So, the demo last week was on how to do a pop-up page. we use discarded old books as recycled..upcycled (!) art journals. I usually glue two or more pages together to give them some body and then gesso them. In this case I drew a flower with my faithful Stabilo pencil, blended and accented it, then cut off all the excess paper just leaving the center part that I had drawn on. without the weight of the extra paper, the page just pops up! In this case I added a quote from Colette regarding memories of flowers..which is, after all, what a drawing of a flower really is if you think about it.

I had so much fun with one demo, I had to do two! This one I painted the gesso on very thinly so some of the original imagery appears softly in the background. this book is about ballet so there are dancers doing a little flower dance around my popped up poppy.

I really liked the sketchy effect of these drawings. It gives them a nice sense of life and immediacy. Me and my Stabilo are off to play together again today...This time with a bit more color and some collage. Mr. Stabilo, where ever you are: hugs, kisses and please don't ever discontinue these yummy pencils!