I got this little tube of paint along with a bundle of other Golden Fluid Acrylics, and I thought it was just another metallic paint for the longest time. I suppose technically, it is, but when I touched it, I realised it’s basically sandpaper in a bottle. So, since I’ve been testing out lots of textured papers, I decided to see how it works as a ground for coloured pencils and pastel pencils.

Notes: I didn’t draw the same eye with the same tones across all pencils, but I did use a white for every sclera, so one can see how the opacity of each pencil works on the ground. Also, I didn’t do any burnishing or blending with outside tools, these were all very quickly done to see how it would go. They all felt amazing to use, I loved the texture. Grittier than Pastelmat.

Holbein Artists’ Coloured Pencils

Caran d’Ache Pablos

Caran d’Ache Luminance

Prismacolor Premier

Derwent Drawing

Derwent Lightfast

Faber-Castell Polychromos

Caran d’Ache Pastel Pencil

Faber-Castell Pitt Pastel

I think I’ll try it with oil pastels and things like Neocolors as well, see what happens there. Overall, I’ll definitely be using it for this purpose rather than as a metallic paint.