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AQUARELLE PENCIL TECHNIQUES -
Watercolour pencils can be used dry or ‘wet’ –
which is to say that the pencil pigment can be moistened with water in several ways
or simply used in the same way as a wax type pencil.
The point of the pencil can also be sharpened in different ways to achieve different results.
Many pencil pigments used in water soluble pencils are totally permanent once dry, and as a general rule, colour will become intensified once water is applied, so be cautious about the amount of colour you apply to the paper if you plan to wet the pigment later. Do check your colours dry and wet before you start using them (see below)
DRY Techniques
Used ‘dry’ there is little difference between Watercolour pencils and Dry Point (Oil or Wax) Coloured Pencils.
The pigments are identical, and the levels of lightfastness compare with those of traditional watercolours.
The finished moistened colour will usually sit in a thinner layer on the paper than dry pigment in a wax carrier, so Aquarelles are more susceptible than dry coloured pencil to fading in strong light .
The pencil binder in Aquarelles is slightly different from wax pencils as it needs to dissolve with water rather than thinners, and this can lead to different handling (even within different brands from the same manufacturer).
WET Techniques
The main benefits of Watercolour pencils is their versatility and the ability to use them ‘wet’ in one of several ways
(see below and in the following section, ‘8 ways of using’ ),
Once you moisten dry W/C pencil pigment on paper, you will see an immediate gain in colour intensity.
There will be a sharp increase in colour contrast. If you are inexperienced with the pencils you may well be surprised.
I suggest the need to practice first on plain watercolour paper and see the effect of adding water to each dry colour in your collection.
The darker colours in your collection will have a higher level of pigment in their make up.
The paler colours will have more filler and less actual pigment, so generally, you will see less colour gain with the paler colours and particularly light yellows and pastel colours, but you will tend to see major gains in the intensity of the stronger and darker colours, reds, oranges, blues and greens.
Different brands vary, but the better brands will convert the colour to an almost completely fluid watercolour wash.
Keep in mind that an area where the colour has been ‘shaded in’ will lift and spread more easily with a brush than a drawn ‘line’, which will tend to lift only a percentage and leave a mark bedded into the paper.
Keep your colour layers lightly applied.
In addition to the smoothness with which they dissolve, you may wish to compare the comparative opacity of the colour in different brands. Some brands have virtually all transparent pigments whilst others use some traditionally opaque earth colours.
If you mix too many opaque colours together you will get the infamous ‘mud’ discovered by many new watercolourists
Earth based colours (Sienna, Umber, Ochre) will not dissolve completely and mixtures of colours may well separate out into granular washes.
WARNING
Watercolour Pencils give us the opportunity to use pencil pigment dry or wet.
This is not to say that we should wet the pencil at any time.
The pigment core of the pencil -
There are art teachers and books that suggest that you should -
You CAN do all of these things just as you CAN run naked up the High street
But you SHOULDN’T
If the pencil core is made wet, it starts to break down and lose its’ internal strength, you then cannot easily use it in its dry pencil form without sharpening away the damp portion to get back to dry pigment.
That reduces the pencil into the waste bin, and you have to buy a new pencil much sooner.
Good for the manufacturer but bad for you.
If you want to use pigment from the brush, sharpen the point carefully into a dish
-
I have listed various alternative ways of using your Watercolour Pencils on the second
page of this section. For completeness, some of the points are repeated from the
points made above -
sorry if it becomes tedious but it is very important !
COLOUR SHIFT
Some brands suffer more with this than others.
When you compare the colour applied to the paper dry with the colour after water has been applied, you may see a difference in colour TINT as well as intensity
.
Often dark colours are the ones most likely to change and the lower priced brands are also the most likely to suffer.
For this reason, I always suggest preparing a colour chart for every box of Aquarelle
pencils immediately you open the new box. Take a clean sheet of watercolour paper
(cold pressed is fine ) and prepare a series of small blocks of colour in rows -
Leave the first block of each set ‘dry’. Moisten the second block of each set with a drop of clean water, and take a clean wet brush to the third block and ‘pull’ the colour out as a wash, getting fainter and fainter.
This will show you any danger areas where moistened colour differs from dry colour in actual tint.
It will also show you where good thin wash colours are, and note any opaque colours.
I still refer to my charts after using some CP colours for years
BELOW is a scan of the chart for Caran d’Ache Supracolor Aquarelles.
You will see how the colours have been laid out, how I have added the lightfast rating
( the stars indicate 3 stars for best lightfastness -
and how the final row shows how the colour washes out.
Supracolor pencils have very little colour shift between the original dry pigment and the same pigment after wetting
Sample showing the effect of adding water to Staedtler Karat 125-
On the left. A shaded area has had water added and the colour has intensified
but also where the brush has been used to drag a wash down from the dry shaded area, the original shading has been completely removed
On the Right. Two lines have been drawn, the lower one more firmly than the upper one.
Water applied across the lines produces a wash but will not remove the lines
Here we have Staedtler Karat no 125 -
In the dry it is quite a dark rich orange brown.
In the wet state, it becomes a rich orange
If you were relying on the colour to stay as the dry shade, you might have a shock !
Compare this with the Staedtler 125-
The tint here remains exactly the same though the colour becomes much more intense
The colour shift we are talking about is not huge, and in some brands and some colours
it is greater than others. It is sufficient, though, to be needing care and pre-
THIS SECTION CONTAINS SIX ARTICLES and a tutorial
There is a link direct to each article in the LINKS PANEL below this window
You can also page through the articles using the arrow button at the top of the pages
or you can use the links here:
Eight ways of using 2 -
A Brush with Watercolour Pencils 5 -
In the ‘Colour Comparisons’ section you will find charts of many of the familiar brands and the aquarelle charts show in each case the effect of adding water to a dry colour
Latest revision April 2010
If you are based outside the UK and have an interest in another view of watercolour pencil brands and techniques, Rob Sloan has some US based information on not only dry point pencil brands ( including several not seen in Europe) and also Aquarelle Brands seen in the USA
and a page of information on Techniques.
All good reading Dry Point Pencil Brands
