anyone using canson? if so do you have any tips?
Ha, I thought kids nowadays(people after me) don’t care about that anymore. Canson is mid-tone medium, so it makes it easier to control your light and dark tones. Use prisma verythin pencils for rough draft, then use the actual prisma pencils on it. You will have to learn how to use pastels, namely the prisma neupastal. Of course you don’t have to use prisma if you don’t wish to.
Start with a darker tone paper, like dark navy blue, cus it’s easier to understand the effect of canson paper. Then move to other ranges as you wish.
Canson paper has 2 sides. One is pattern textured, which is not the preferred side.
Don’t afraid to apply too much pastel on it. Canson paper is pretty forgiving.
You can try using spray paint technique, meaning masking areas and apply spray can. The rule is you MUST use MATTE finish spray paint. Preferred brand is Krylon. I use it for back ground, usually black. It does what pastel and marker can’t in a very short time. Trick is how you control the gradient and not apply too much.
You can do so much with Canson that it will take forever to learn. I only know a bit of it as compared to what my instructors can do, usually the old school ones. It’s awesome.
One bad thing about canson is it is very hard to digitalize. I’ve tried using digital camera or scanner. Neither gives the visual result you see.
wow thank you so much for the tips!
been ages! think i have some lying around. might have to play 
here’s an old canson rendering from school:
I liked the medium very much but it isn’t very practical in a lot of ways. I used to either sketch right on the canson paper to start, or transfer a sketch from vellum or trace by burnishing from behind. Then you get one chance at the rendering.
Kind of antiquated but the look is pretty distinctive.
I used to love running canson through the photocopier to copy your smaller inks & enlarge them onto some warm grey canson. from threre just use white barrel prismacolor pencils and a paynes grey for the darks. Sweet!
canson is fun. it’s also fun to fake it in photoshop and fool the old guys!
Here are some of my old cansons from school (the top one is newsprint)… I also like to do the fake digital cansons now, it’s really fun and fast.
that probably includes me. so how do you fake canson?
YO, like the locomotive. always liked trains. got more?
I also want to show off a bit…
Freshman project: We had to do all the presentation boards manually and exploded view was required, so canson was the most efficient medium.
Then Viscom class a year later. Instructor was Sung Paik. Any CCS student will know him, and anyone who knows him knows what I am talking about. He’s simply amazing. He’s also the instructor that told us about using spray paint for back grounds and various effiects to get enough contrast without burning your markers. He also encourages lot’s of pastel. Generally, he believes more in Canson’s texture rather than the fact that it’s mid-tone. Don’t get me wrong, he can do so much with minimum shades and colors. However he never let us take pictures of his old works that he brings in.
great stuff mCow, esp for a freshaman project. Keep bringing it on man!
I’m putting together a demo to simulate the digital proccess. Should have it done this weekend.