Canson Velvet Pastel Paper - What you NEED to know! Jason Morgan Art

Well, when I did my first review of Kansan Velvet Paper just a couple of weeks ago, it created a real storm online and it's pretty much sold out over the world. There's not been a lot of stock out anyway because it's such a new paper. Now, is it worth you actually buying it or should you stay with pastelmat? That's what I'm going to tell you in this video. And also, I'm going to show you a drawing that I've done on it where you can see exactly how it layers and the layer details on top. Everything really you need to know about that paper. So let's jump right in and see how it performs. So you can see on the edge, let's compare that against a light blue. See that's got less of a grainy appearance to it. But if I was using the brown to do this, it would be fairly similar. Okay, so we've got to keep these things in mind that this paper is a bit different. Like pastelmat, the first layer holds that pastel which I like. I remember as this is a new paper to me and maybe a new paper for everyone else as well. I'm not sure how many layers I can get. How it's really going to behave in comparison to what I'm used to. Now pastelmat would hold the colour and you see that's doing exactly the same. I can rub like that and it's just staying there because that's the first layer. So I'm just hoping now that I can do that and that I can actually put multiple layers now on top. Okay, so I'm using a nice sharp Pitt pastel pencil and as you can see the marks are going on really well and it's pretty much exactly as I would expect with the pastelmat paper. You can see every couple of strokes I'm turning my pencil, keeping it sharp. As I said, I'm not changing my style at all with this paper. So at this stage I'd say the only real difference is if you're used to the pastelmat, light blue, which I am, that's my favourite paper, this is a little rougher. So all that would mean is on the under layer, just put a little bit more pastel down or perhaps do another layer. But once that under layer has been put down, as I've shown, you can obviously detail it like this on top. No problem at all and that's really what I was hoping for. Let's paint that down a bit. I'm really challenging this paper with something like this. No paper can just continuously get more and more layers of sharp lines on there so it's always going to be a best case scenario. If I wanted even sharper, and I haven't tried anything with this paper yet, but that's where you could use a fixative on the dark under layer. Knowing you're going to put something lighter on top. Alternatively, I could have done a black of gouache underneath and then put this on top. You know, there's ways and means to get around these things. Now here it's a bit more subdued. Allowing plenty of the dark under layer to show through. Fill this bit in. I don't need a really super sharp pencil here because it's quite soft. I don't particularly want to be rubbing it with my finger to try and soften it because I'll lose the definition then as well. And it could go quite muddy looking quickly. Right. When you blend with this paper, it feels almost identical. Now, it may even actually feel identical to parcel mat. Let's darken some areas up now. Make sure that I'm coming outside my little border edge as well. And that scoops up a bit into that dark area. Don't get too carried away with this. If I keep going with too much detail here, it's going to all of a sudden start mixing together. Not looking kind of wiry, crispy looking here that I want it to look like. I'm going to put darker on the edge. Clean finger. I'll have to build this up. Darker on the edge and then use a pencil. So this will create kind of a spotlight effect on it. That blends nice. Right, soften the edge and then I can work over that edge then to bring those colours and everything back. That blue really held well on there. Better than it would have with parcel mat. Let's bring a couple of little bits down there. Okay, so let's give a bit of a summary. It's a little bit rougher than the light blue parcel mat, which is my favourite parcel mat colour. It's more like the brown or the dark grey. So keep that in mind. That may mean you would want to put a little bit more down as your underlayer to fill the tooth of the paper up a bit more before you put your details on top. Does it take details? You've just seen for pastels, it took fantastic details on top. Same as parcel mat, maybe a little bit more. So the big question is, should you switch from parcel mat to this? Well, what I would say is if you've already got stock of parcel mat and I've got lots and lots of stock, I just continue using it. Only if you've not got stock perhaps and you're buying new parcel paper, then I would look to buy this one. And also perhaps if your stock of parcel mat has got lots of faults on there, lots of those quality issues I mentioned before, you may want to, perhaps you're a bit fed up with that and then you just want to get from parcel mat and use this paper instead. So do you need it? You don't absolutely need it at all, but we have now got a viable alternative to parcel mat. So you can use this Canson Velvet or parcel mat for any of my lessons and you know you're going to have the ability to get those layers. Now, if you've enjoyed this video, I think you should watch this one next. I think you're going to love it.