Tree Stumps & Putty Rubbers

Tree stumps are pretty tricky using pastel pencils. The difficulty is you keep going in with darker and darker colours starting with the medium colours and then ending up with a black blob on the paper, because you have gone too far.  The only way out is to use a putty rubber.  When anything's overworked, use the putty rubber by pressing it on. Don't rub it like a normal eraser - just press it on, take it off and keep doing that.  This way you can get rid of a good 50% of the pastel that you have put on.You can then re-apply and the beauty of this is, because you are not rubbing it off you are not doing any damage to the pastel paper.  You can imagine if you have all that colour that you have put on a particular subject. Let's look at hair as an example -  If you use a rubber to rub it off not only are you ruining the effect of the subject but you are also starting to wear the paper down.  It's common for things like animal hair to be overworked. A West Highland Terrier or Yorkie where you have lots of hair and going darker and darker.I also like to use a Putty Rubber for effects that I'm creating.  It works very well in rocks and sometimes I deliberately over apply the pastel and then use the putty rubber to take some of it off. You get an effect you can't normally achieve.  The effect is more textured.  Be careful when choosing a putty rubber as some of the cheaper ones are very sticky.  The Faber-Castell putty rubbers are very good and can be purchased through our art store. Watch me use the putty rubber across various subjects on this website, join up to be a member and watch nearly 100 hours pastel pencil tutorials.