Final! I am really happy with this little hummingbird. I am going to throw it on the scanner to see if I can get a better representation of it.

finished piece

Midway point!

I think that I am about midway here

Casein, colored pencil and graphite on paper. 3 1/2″ by 4 1/2″

I am trying out casein for this piece. I have been using casein on the stones with encaustic and I would like to try using it on paper. I love the smell of this paint! And, it is opaque but also transparent. It seems to work well not only under pencil but also seems to work well overtop. The ground for this was created using crumpled tissue over paper and then saturated with the casein paint. Once it was mostly dry I took up the tissue paper and the ground is what was left behind. Of course no white of the paper really was preserved, so the white casein was needed to provide the white. This project is slated to be given away to one of my friends.

Ground, white, pencil outline