Let’s talk about rubbers!

Let’s talk about rubbers… and paper ✏️

A fascinating subject, I know! 😬

I’m currently working on the commission I cant share with you, so I was pondering what else to waffle on about today, and the idea of rubbers came to mind.

I’m working on Pastelmat at the minute, which is a very abrasive surface, almost like sandpaper if you’ve never seen it. This has some positives, like the ability to do lots and lots and lots of layers, and its ability to cling onto that pencil. That’s why I choose to use it for human portraits; you can layer all the colours that go into making skin and really perfect that tone!

Because pastelmat clings onto that pencil so hard, you can’t just go at it with a normal rubber, or it’ll smudge and make a big ol’ mess. So I use these little kneadable erasers. They’re malleable and a bit sticky, so you can dab at the area and remove the excess pencil ‘dust’ and relieve some of that pigment if you want to rework an area. As you can smush it into any shape, you can work on teeny tiny areas, or larger areas really easily.

Another plus of these rubbers is that things smudge so easily on pastelmat, it’s great for collecting up excess dust before it makes a mess!

Here’s me smushing my rubber into different shapes…. For demonstration purposes of course, not fun 😉