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DRY POINT PENCIL TECHNIQUES -
If you read books on Coloured Pencil Techniques or follow discussions on Internet Forums, you may well see the problem of WAX BLOOM mentioned and the different ways people work around it.
Readers in Europe and outside the USA are less aware of the problem, as the difficulty arises from the wax carriers used by two of the major manufacturers, Sanford’s Prismacolor in the USA and Derwent in the UK.
What is wax bloom ?
It is a fine grey powder coating that develops on a heavily waxed surface which can obscure the detail of an artwork completed in wax pencil. You don’t get wax bloom unless there is a lot of wax material on the paper surface and you don’t get it if you use an oil based pencil brand such as Polychromos, Pablo, or Polycolor, . It is not the end of civilisation as we know it if it occurs, and those who use wax based pencils often prefer to stay with their wax brand and work around any bloom which arises rather than change brand.
It is notable that Caran d’Ache adopted wax as the base for their new ‘top of the range’ Luminance pencils even though they use oil for the rest of the CP lines they manufacture. They do, however, state that Luminance uses a wax which does not bloom.
I haven’t had a problem with bloom myself, but then I use underpainting to get depth of colour and I tend to use Oil based pencils for my own work.
Bloom can be removed by gentle wiping of the wax surface and there are preventative sprays which can be used to seal the surface and stop it returning.
What does it look like?
American artist Brandy Perez has kindly allowed me to use some of her artwork to illustrate .
( Note the images are all copyright of Brandy Perez 2009 )
Using a Krylon brand workable spray fixative at regular intervals can prevent the bloom happening.
As far as I know this product is mainly available in the USA
This is what wax bloom looks like on the image surface
It can be carefully removed
This is the completed Picture
It was worked on a rust coloured Colorfix paper (a sanded type of surface which holds a lot of media) and Prismacolor pencils.
The picture is approx 16ins x 20 ins
See the item on Backgrounds which also features this work
More of Brandy’s work at :
DRY POINT COLOUR
BASIC TECHNIQUES for Wax and Oil based Coloured Pencils (1) ; APPLICATION OF COLOUR (2) ; DENSITY OF COLOUR (3)
DIFFERENT MARKS on the paper (4) ; WAX BLOOM (5) ; FIXATIVES (6)