Isobel's Experience with Velour Pastel Paper

One of our members recently tried our Velour Pastel Paper for the first time. We have heard mixed things about the paper, saying that it can be tricky to work with but takes a lot of layers. In one of our recent blogs we interviewed Rebecca Ozkural who used it for the first time.Isobel agreed to share with us her experiences using the paper:

Hi Steve.I have finished my painting on velour. Found it very difficult to work on with the pencils and to be honest there are very few pencils actually on it. I made the mistake of doing it on black velour. I did the undercoat with faber castell soft pastels. I found that using this paper certainly makes you freer in your painting.I found that the darker pencils would work over the soft pastels but the light colours just pushed away the undercoat and really made no impact. it was also difficult to get the colour I wanted on the paper but that is probably because it is on black paper. it does take a few layers. On the black it was easy to fix mistakes but on a lighter paper I think it would be more difficult.I didn't like using it very much (but then I did not like pastelmat at first either) I actually think I prefer pastelmat now first then ingres. I will give it another try on a lighter paper and see how that goes. Maybe I will be able to use more pencils in it. Here is the picture below.IsobelP.S. The background is black but the light from the window seems to have made it look dark blue. The cat's colours are pretty close to the original though. His name is Fonzie and he is a Serval cat. I did a commission on him and this is one of the other photos I took.

Here's Isobel's painting:We think Isobel's done a fab job of the picture. You can see the depth in the subject through the layers the paper takes. It doesn't sound like an easy paper to work with but maybe with time, such as working with PastelMat, it'll become easier to master.Have you worked with Velour Pastel Paper? What have been your experiences? Let us know in the comments below.