I started these wizard portraits working very small (6 x 8 inch page size), but this one, which is about 9 x 11, inches just sort of happened. It seems I can’t get wizards out of my mind. Now it seems many of them might end up being very large as well. We’ll see.
This is in an Arteza watercolor book—they are not good quality, and I wouldn’t have chosen to work in that book had I known I was going to do another wizard. But I had some of these to use up and it was on the table where I had been collaging. The paper warps when wet—that makes getting a flat scan, even when weighting the book, difficult. I’m not letting that bother me (too much.)
I haven’t been very impressed with Azteca watercolor pencils, either. I bought some for my students and was unhappy to find how little pigment there seemed to be in them. When you apply water, they just wash away and become pale puddles. But I love your wizard drawing!!
Amy, the Arteza Watercolor journal was the first product I found of theirs, simply because I’d looked at another journal and the advertisements started to come up online.
While I have’t used their other products I did look at some of them and read about them. They all looked below student grade in quality because of the cost.
When working with watercolor pencils I recommend my students get Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer. They are artist quality. There are some other artist quality brands but I don’t recall all the ones I tested years ago. The F-CAC are my favorites. If students have to get some for a class I specify 6 pencils (a Warm and Cool of each primary, and I use the dark Indigo or whatever it is that is close to PB60 for the warm blue (All my watercolor pencils are in storage right now)—I know they’ll have enough umph to get good contrast). We work with those and they can get used to using and mixing the pencils without needing more (unless they decide they want to pursue it), and while having a pencil that actually works as it should.
Thanks for the confirming heads up about Arteza’s watercolor pencils.
Glad you enjoyed the wizard. Thanks for stopping by.