Smudges

They're all over my drawing sheet, at first I thought it was some refuse from my erasing but it seems to be more permanent than that. I've gone at them with the knead eraser and the plastic eraser, and then every other eraser I have and I can't get it off. It's too close to the drawing and really ruins the compostion, is it time to break out ye olde white out or have you artists discovered another way of removing strange smudges that appear out of nowhere? It's prismacolor colored pencil on acid free 70lb paper by the way...any suggestions would be helpful! ahlyn

OH GOD!!! Prisma smudges.... They makes us angry my precious! I know your pain!....Taz, what's the name of the stuff we spray on our bristol board? I'm having another moment....

Workable fixative

Thank you daddy....Ahyln, you can try that stuff and see how it works for you. We have always sprayed it on AFTER we were done with the drawing to prevent smudges but I think one of the guys says that it works the sameway if you use it before you start your drawing....I could be very mistaken.... Personally the only thing that I have come accross that works for me is a good old huff and puff arcoss the paper, then use a simple soft brissle artist brush. The key is to pay ultimate attention to how much of the prisma waste is laying around on your paper...(I'm not saying that you don't do that already. You know what I am getting though.) Prismas are awesome pencils but that smudging shit gets a bit ridiculous! Hope that helps somewhat.... J

Alas it's too late for prevention, but I'll start spraying my stuff down from now on. Should I just ditch the drawing now?

By all means, no.... use it as a learning tool if anything.... if it is already messed up why not use it to try some things you wouldn't normally do with the colors....experiment!...That's just my two cents though. :P ....J

I threw it out...usually by the time I start talking about throwing things out I'm half way there. It's a bad habit with my writing too, I never have any drafts of my stuff....actually that's going to be really horrible both for my senior writing portfolio and my art portfolio, anyway I'm rambling. I can do the drawing better and I will, thanks for the lead on the fixative! ahlyn

No problem.....J

Prismacolor, Pencil, charcoal,pastels etc etc etc, ALL smudge and should NOT be handled. The best way to preserve is to mount under glass. Now, That being said.....If it is NOT intended to be a framed piece of art, is being placed in a portfolio etc. a working drawing that will be handled.....slid between other drawings...or suffer other abuse.....you need to FIX it. This buys some time and give a certain amount of protection. A fixative such as what Taz mentioned is great. Instead of a commercial fixative I've been using hairspray for years! Same thing. A fixative allows you to do additional work in the future as most will accept reworking. If you need something more permanent you can try Stretching the paper to a board like you would with watercolor paper., then spraying with clear lacquer when finished and before cutting free. You can also bring to a place like Staples and have laminated.

Ive always used fixatives on my charcoal, pastel, pencil and other media, the real problem is is that I got a smudge of something strange on my paper (not pencil, not eraser) and I was trying to get it off. The fixative that was mentioned seemed to be like something you could work with in process without any problems, I had not thought of that before. But besides that I junked it anyway so now it is not a problem anymore. In the portfolio I previously had I had drawings seperated by acid-free leaflets and mounting material that loosely attached to the drawings. I thought it gave more accessibility to the media itself, in case you really needed to get close and look at the technical blending etc. Do tattoo artists prefer lamination? To make it appear more like a flash book or...To answer your comment with a question which mounting material do you like to see? ahlyn

Vellum! That was what I was trying to say, sorry about that.

I use chewing gum...Orbit seems to work best