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AQUARELLE PENCIL TECHNIQUES  - 5 -

A Brush with W/C Pencils

 

When you paint with traditional watercolours, you are advised to use a brush with some – or all – natural fibre in it, as this ‘holds’ water better and if you have a sable hair content in the brush, it also ‘points’ well and enables you to work with the best possible tool.

This is because when you are painting in traditional watercolour, you are using the brush for transferring a water based pigment to the paper and want to be able to hold the best balance of the pigment in the brush and lay it down accurately.   

Your watercolour brush will be soft to the feel, but come to a fine point

It will probably also be expensive

 

Using a brush with watercolour pencils can involve entirely different techniques and therefore also require different types of brush.

Yes, you can use watercolour pencil washes,  and for this you will need exactly the same type of brush as you would for the process described above.  The only difference in the wash is that it is produced from the pencil pigment – usually by scraping off some of the dry pencil point into a dish and adding water.  The wash is virtually indistinguishable from one made with watercolour out of a tube or pan.   

It therefore needs a similar brush.

 

The main W/C pencil technique, for me, is the softening of dry pigment which has been applied dry to the paper from the pencil point.  This needs a brush which is fairly firm but which comes to a good point.  For this, an inexpensive nylon watercolour brush is perfectly adequate, and I rarely pay more than £2.50 for mine.  

 

You need your brush to Moisten, Move, Blend and Lift.

These all have a ‘scrubbing’ effect with the brush tip and therefore a quality brush will soon be ruined.  Once your brush starts to lose the point, throw it away.

 

I will insert a WARNING here before I go any further.  Some watercolour pencils are designed to act like Artists quality watercolours

( e.g. Faber Castell Albrechet Durer ), Some will behave like Student Quality watercolours (e.g. Staedtler Karat ) and some will have different behaviours ( e.g. Derwent Inktense ).  The Inktense pencil is designed to respond to water once only.  It is designed to be permanent on the paper once dry, and therefore acts more like an ink.

You do not get a chance to re-work it.

 

The techniques, then, are as follows:

Pigment :  You need a layer of dry pigment built up on the paper surface.  There may be a single colour or a combination of layers of soluble colour.  The method works best with several colours being blended and manipulated on the paper

Moisten :   make sure that the brush is just wet.  Avoid transferring any actual water to the paper so that it sits as a droplet.  

Your brush should feel only damp when you wipe it across the back of your hand.  

This will apply enough water to the pigment to dissolve it and lock it into the paper surface.  

Your colour will now intensify as it merges with the paper.

Move  :    using a pushing motion, it is quite possible to move your soft pigment around on the paper.  

I always suggest that if you have different levels of shade in your dry colour, that you work from the lighter shade to the darker shade.

This keeps the lighter edges light, as the brush tends to ‘snowplough’ pigment in front of it.  

One exception here would be if you were – for example – shading colour in a flower petal from a laid down coloured edge of the petal into the white paper of the centre ( or vice versa ). In this case I would pull the pigment out rather than push it with the brush.

Blend   :   When you have a number of colours or shades laid down dry on the paper, it is easy to work them with a moist brush to manipulate the coloured surface, blending and shaping the way the colour lies.   For this, a firm brush is essential  ( see below for an example )

And finally  

Lift  :   because you will probably have much more pigment on the paper than you would with traditional W/C painting, the pigment doesn’t all lock down into the paper.  It often sits up like an acrylic layer. The difference from acrylic though, is that your W/C pencil pigment can be re-worked and lifted ( but not Inktense - see above). Again you will need a firm brush for this – and probably one with a good point to it.  Make sure that you have some kitchen roll to hand before you start to be able to remove the surplus lifted colour

 

So, DON’T use expensive sable brushes for Watercolour pencil manipulation

And DO throw the cheap ones away when they lose their point

 

Here you can see the cobbles to the right have been brushed in to achieve the shape of the stones in the road.  The pigment on the left hand side is still dry

Latest revision April 2010

AQUARELLES

AQUARELLE PENCIL TECHNIQUES 1   Eight ways of using  2   -  Why Under Paint?  3   

-  Backgrounds with Aquarelles   4  -   A Brush with Watercolour Pencils  5  -

 Foliage in Watercolour Pencils  6     The Cottage Garden Tutorial