Ronnie Tucker – Pet, Wildlife & Portrait Artist.

Watercolour pencils – the best of both worlds

Dec 30, 2009 art, pencil, watercolour

Derwent Aquatone watercolour pencils

Yes, I know ‘watercolour pencils’ seems impossible, but so did ‘drawing with an eraser‘ and it worked!

If you use watercolour, you’ll know that when it comes from a tube it will harden to a solid state but still be reusable when made wet. Watercolour pencils work in the same way, instead of using graphite, they use a solid core of watercolour which can be used, in this case, like you would with a normal coloured pencil. The main difference here is that when you wet the pencil drawing, the ‘graphite’ will dissolve leaving you with watercolour.

Here’s a quick example I sketched this up just last night using my Aquatone pencils (click here for a quick report on them and the Derwent Inktense pencils), it’s part landscape, part abstract (hence the odd colours):

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Tags: aquatone, derwent, drawing, inktense, painting, pencil, pencils, sketch, thumbnail, watercolor, watercolour

A comparison of Derwent Aquatone, Derwent Inktense and Caran D’Ache Neocolor II

Dec 23, 2009 art, ink, pencil

First of all, this test is far from scientific… it involved me doing a light scribble of each colour on some rough watercolour paper then applying some water to one half of the scribble. The idea being to show how the colours look, dry, on the paper, and to show the change in colour when the water is added. The reason for the light scribble is that a heavy scribble can not only damage the paper, it makes it harder to remove the scribble from the paper as the colour has become engrained in the paper. A heavy scribble will get your brighter, deeper, colour – but it is usually best to achieve this through layering. I’ve also tried to pick the same colours from all three sets, but colours (and names) vary from box to box, so I could only get similar colours.

So, on with the comparison…

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Tags: aquatone, brush, caran, d'ache, derwent, drawing, ink, inktense, neocolour, painting, pencil, stick, water, watercolor, watercolour