My Nupastel drawing technique
 

I'd much rather draw with Nupastel sticks than with charcoal, Conte, pencil or color pencil.

Because of the nature of the material, the drawings have to be fairly large, though, and their size makes them difficult to frame.

Unlike pastel painting techniques, I can use fixative on the drawings before I frame them or store them.

My surface of choice has been an off-white Crescent Museum Mounting Board. I have a lot on hand. I don't know if the stuff is even made anymore.

The board comes in 40" x 32" sheets. I usually use the whole sheet.

I have to draw accurately. Dark lines are hard to erase.

I "pull" most of my lines.

I just turn my arm to pull lines in different directions.

The point wears down pretty fast so I keep it in reserve.

Blending with the knuckles is nice, but be careful not to wear them out.

I like this fine netting material as a blender. It is not too soft, and it is fairly strong.

The old bristle brush gets better as I wear down the bristles.

The fun begins when I get out the eraser.

I can pull out very fine detail or wonderfully fine lines by working my kneaded eraser into a point.

That's all folks. Thanks for your patience.

A nice new square ended stick of Nupastel has four sharp edges. I rarely take an exacto knife to a stick.

I probably did the standing figure with at least three diffent colors.

Given the limitations of photography, I'd have to take a closeup shot of a drawing with my digital camera to show you satisfactory detail. Meanwhile this fairly large sized detail, scanned from a 4x5" transparency, will have to do.

They take several days.

Now that I'm older, EVERYTHING takes several days.