It was lovely to colour those two pages! It took some time to complete, there are so many details. I wanted to create the feeling of the pages of an enchanted book and Ivy and the Inky Butterfly by Johanna Basford really is a magical tale to colour! Sometimes, I will change a bit the original drawing by adding details or altering a shape. In this case, I thought the Dragon should have a longer nose, to look more powerful. I used Pigma Micron pens black ink to outline the new shape, and simply coloured it. I think it looks good!:)

I used Faber-Castell Polychromos to colour this one and Mungyo Gallery soft pastels for the areas with text. In the past, I used Krylon, a spray fixative to keep the pastel’s pigment in place. This time, the fixative reacted with the Polychromos and created a white layer on top of my colouring. I was so sad 😦 It took many hours to complete this beautiful illustration and I was quite happy with the result. Fortunately, I was able to remove a part of it using a soft fabric. I’ve contacted the company that produces Krylon fixative for artwork, forwarded all my images by email, but I was never contacted back. I’m disapointed and I will not use Krylon Fixative anymore.

My advice here is to always test any fixative in a separate paper, before applying to your artwork. You should test even if you know the product. I have used many cans of Krylon in the past and had great results, until those four cans. Yes, I’ve bought four cans and tested all of them, they all created a white layer on top of Polychromos pencils.

As a fixative substitute, now I’m using only Caran D’ache colourless blender on top of soft pastels. I discovered it works well on a book page, because the area is not too large. I just cover the places I used pastels, and the blender keeps the pigment in place. I’m quite happy with this solution: it’s faster than spraying fixative and it is smell-free! 🙂

I made some tests with Krylon and Polychromos, here are the photos with the results: