{"id":1381560,"date":"2017-12-27T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2017-12-27T09:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jacksonsart.com\/blog\/?p=1381560"},"modified":"2026-10-21T16:34:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T15:34:47","slug":"experimenting-new-suede-paper-colourfix-smooth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jacksonsart.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/27\/experimenting-new-suede-paper-colourfix-smooth\/","title":{"rendered":"Experimenting with a new suede paper: Colourfix Smooth"},"content":{"rendered":"
France Bauduin, a member of the UK Coloured Pencil Society (UKCPS)<\/a>, uses coloured pencils for stunning animal drawings. Here she tries the new smooth surface of Colourfix Paper that Art Spectrum released earlier this year.<\/h5>\n
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Experimenting with a new suede paper: Colourfix Smooth<\/strong><\/h5>\n

by France Bauduin SOFA, UKCPS<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Earlier this year, I was given 3 small samples of this new paper Colourfix Smooth<\/a>: burnt umber, elephant and aubergine to experiment with.
\nBurnt umber turned out to be the perfect colour for my subject: the portrait of a young lynx. With such a dark coloured paper, I was surprised to see that it didn\u2019t need an undercoat of white for even the palest colour to come true. As for the white, I never thought it would possible to get it so bright with so few layers.
\nWith elephant, I chose to draw the portrait of a silver tabby kitten. Again, this was the perfect colour for my subject and I managed the most incredible bright sparkly eyes. I used a black Pitt Pastel pencil for the background and found that it covered the paper even better than colour pencils.
\nAubergine would not have been my first choice for the portrait of a snow leopard or any other animal but as there were some undertones of purple in my model, I decided to give it a go. The result was bright and colourful but my snow leopard didn\u2019t look very natural.<\/p>\n

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Snow Leopard by France Bowden on Colourfix Smooth
\nAubergine (25.5 hours to complete)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Lynx Portrait by France Bauduin on Colourfix Smooth
\nBurnt Umber (12 hours to complete)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Snow Leopards on Black Colourfix Smooth Paper<\/h5>\n

Jackson’s then sent me four new big sheets of Colourfix Smooth including black. Remembering how well my colour pencils were covering Burnt Umber, I couldn\u2019t wait to try to draw my snow leopards on black.<\/p>\n

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Snow Leopards at 18 hours.
by France Bauduin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Snow Leopards at 26 hours.
by France Bauduin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Creating my usual grid with white dots looked promising. Just like with burnt umber, I didn\u2019t have to press hard for these to come out well. Just like before, it took me a bit of experimenting to find which colour pencils I needed to achieve the desired effects as the paper doesn\u2019t allow that many layers. Not that you need many as most colour pencil brands cover it so well. Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils work particularly well on this kind of surface, as well as Caran d\u2019Ache Pablo. I also got good results with Prismacolor & Caran d\u2019Ache Luminance but less so with Derwent Coloursoft unless they were applied first. A warning though: while it was easy to erase mistakes to bring back a pristine black, doing so also seemed to erode some of the fixative that allows the colours to take so well on that kind of paper. While dark colours weren\u2019t much affected, the white areas were never as bright afterwards, looking more greyish blue than white. Fortunately, by adding a fine layer of white pan pastels over these little areas, I was able to solve that problem.<\/p>\n

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Snow Leopards at 39 hours.
by France Bauduin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Snow Leopards at 46 hours.
by France Bauduin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As I wanted to keep my black background black, I didn\u2019t place my subject first like I usually do. Instead, I worked from top to bottom and usually left to right as it was easy to smudge the colours near the outline. If it happened, it was easily lifted with a Faber-Castell putty eraser. So not really a problem but you still need to be careful.
\nAnother advantage of not having to apply so many layers is that once you have found the combination of colour pencils that give you the desired effect, you can work a lot faster with generally less colour pencils as well. It\u2019s possible that as a result, you may not achieve as much finesse and depth as with another type of paper that allows more layers but this should prove an advantage for anyone doing commissions where time is money. A solution to add more layers could be to use a fixative between coats but I have not tried it.
\nThe colours also come out brighter than most papers I know and are similar to what you can achieve with pastels. For this, black paper was the ultimate test and my snow leopards came out bright and lively and this time, with the right colour undertones.<\/p>\n

Choosing the right colour for your subject is indeed paramount to a successful drawing. The good news is that Colourfix Smooth<\/a> comes in 20 different colours so you should be able to pick one that will suit you.<\/p>\n

The Finished Drawing<\/h5>\n
\"France-Bauduin-Snow-leopards-black-52-hours\"<\/a>
Keeping Watch
18.7 x 16.5 inches
France Bauduin
(The drawing took 52 hours to complete)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Some of the colours perform better than others<\/h5>\n

I discovered however that somehow not every colour for Colourfix Smooth reacts the same way to colour pencils. I also did a drawing on snow leopards on soft umber Colourfix smooth and discovered to my dismay that the adherence of colour pencils to that particular colour was much less than the other colours I had tried. It was much harder to achieve good contrast and very difficult to layer it. I still managed to pull it off but it\u2019s not a colour I would recommend for anyone. I thought I might have had a ‘bad sheet’ but my friend Judith Crown had the same problems with her own sheet of soft umber. I hope not many people will have their first try with this colour as it would probably put them off the whole series of Colourfix smooth.<\/p>\n

On the other hand the Elephant colour is performing well. Here is a work in progress photo of five kittens that I am currently working on using that colour.<\/p>\n

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‘Laila’s 7th Litter’ at the 42 hour point.
By France Bauduin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Summing all up:<\/h5>\n

The advantages of the Colourfix Smooth paper<\/a> are numerous:<\/strong><\/p>\n