Some trouble with watercolor pencil/crayon underpaintings

I worked on this piece yesterday. I wish I would have taken some progress shots, but I just plowed through it. I did a full underpainitng using Neocolor II's and Spectracolor watercolor pencils. Not just blocking in colors like I did on the bags, but tried to do a painting under the drawing with the correct colors and values as the end result but less detailed. Then the plan was to fill out and refine the watercolor painting with dry colored pencils. This was done on grey Pastelbord.

I decided to do this because the board I had is a dark grey and I needed the colors to be vibrant for this spring pic. The underpainting would hopefully kill that grey from coming through my pencil and killing the color. That is true, my colors are evry vibrant.... hmmmm maybe too vibrant.

Well I struggled with it as I have with some other watercolor pencil/dry colored pencil paintings. First off the neos and h2o penicls aren't like putting a wash of watercolor paint - they are pencils and leave a residue, even after dissolving with water, that limits the amounts of layers you put over it. Also, as I found with the background, if you decide the color you put down with the watercolor was not correct, it is very hard to change the color. You wouldn't believe how many layers I had to squeeze onto that background to alter the hue of the neocolor wash.

I find that after putting watercolor pencil or neocolor II that not only do you have less layers to work with, but because of the residue you also have to use much more pressure, so you are essentially pushing the pencil on or are already in a burnished state. I don't enjoy this, and neither does my wrist! It also makes it harder to put in little highlights that I needed to add on the flower petals. Putting dark over them is not a problem, its putting lighter more vibrant detailed pencil that is the problem. This is something that I love about working with sanded papers, that they allow me to put highlights in whenever I want, so losing that ability is very disappointing to me.

Its funny that it has taken me this long to figure out what I was struggling with and what FELT wrong when working over the h2o pencils/crayons. I've been able to get decent results, but with using extra time and struggling the whole way.

So my conclusion is that for me, I will use watercolor pencils and neocolor II's sparingly for underpaintings. I've found them great for dark black backgrounds and for paintings that don't have small important details. They worked great for the bags which were abstract and details could be left out, but also where I layered dark over light watercolor instead of the other way around.

Pretty in Pink & Derwent Coloursoft review

I wouldn't want you all to wait too long without a new piece! This again is just off the drawing table - meaning that I haven't "tweaked" it yet so there will be minor changes before I seal it. The photo isn't very good as it is blurry on the right side. I had to photo it quickly as I photograph them outside and it was drizzling!

For all you colored pencil people I wanted to talk a bit about the new Derwent Coloursoft pencils. I used some on this piece and the previous pieces I've done. I only did one so far in all Coloursoft pencils - I've mostly been combining them with Prismacolor.

I just love these pencils so far. They blend really well without getting that darn waxy build up and combine well with Prismacolors. I did find, however, that it is best to put the Coloursofts over the prismacolor than the other way around as the prismacolor waxiness is hard to get on top of the Coloursofts - not impossible though. The colors of the coloursoft are amazingly vibrant and, so far, I haven't had any trouble with them darkening with fixative or even the spray varnish I use after fixing. The black and white pencils (and ditto if you are an indigo junkie) are worth buying alone as they go on much better than Prismacolors. The black for instance covers most all of the pesky grain of the Pastelbord easily while the black Prismacolor never does. My black and indigo are small enough already that I need new ones!

They are available now in open stock at Dick Blick http://www.dickblick.com/zz220/64/. If they weren't avaiable that way I wouldn't have even tried them.

My only complaint so far is that although they fit in my American pencil sharpener - you have to use some muscle to really get them to sharpen. I guess I need to get a Euro pencil sharpener! Oh and the other thing, which really comes from being used to Prismacolors, is that all the pencil shafts are the same color so although they are marked on the bottom with the color they are harder to locate quickly like with Prismacolors.

If I could buy them in openstock locally I would switch over to them from Prismacolor - I like them so much - but there's always that time when you just need another pencil NOW and can't wait for mail order. Plus I have drawers filled with Prismacolors so I can't switch any day soon!