Sometimes you work in watercolor and you pick up some color pencils too.
It’s fun, why not? Especially if you spent your childhood working with color pencils.
I started this portrait of a fairgoer from Earth’s World using a black grape Prismacolor pencil. (It’s not black, it’s not overly strident. I enjoy it. I also enjoy sketching with different red and blue pencils.
I encourage you to try a bunch of options and see which you prefer. Be sure to give your editing eye a couple attempts to adjust before you rule something out.
I don’t do a lot of detail when I’m sketching like this, I move right to watercolor. And when the watercolor dries I go back in with color pencils as feel appropriate.
I have to say that after the first half of this year with the experiments with dry media I have to put on the breaks to remember not to scribble everywhere.
Scribbling everywhere is fine, even great fun. But always ask yourself what your final goal is.
In the second image of this post you’ll see the sketch in my handbound book (Th Saunders/Waterford Hot press 90 lb. watercolor paper, 8 inches square [approx.]) with the limited color pencils I used and my palette box.
I used Cerulean Blue Chromium (CBC), which isn’t in one of the pans but is on the upper right palette mixing space as a blog. It’s there because this is a little used palette of odd-ball colors and I last used it last year when testing CBC.
I also used red oxide (in a blob next to the CBC), a smidge of Perylene green in a couple of my mixes to neutralize them; quin. pink, saturn red, a warm yellow, yellow-orange, and a bit of May green. (Not being my usual palette it doesn’t have my favorite green, green gold.) A bit of spinel brown was mixed with the saturn red to get the ginger beard.
The brown background is a Montana marker with a 3/4 inch wide tip. I added this to give me something to work against when refining the hair values. And I wanted something behind that white tank t-shirt.
The white color pencil with the brown barrel is a Derwent Drawing pencil. I find the lead in that pencil softer than the Prismacolors and easier to apply.
The brush is a #6 round: old, fuzzy, discontinued Loew-Cornell brush. I love it and can’t bring myself to retire it to the texture brushes that are even more fuzzy.
Take a look at what is sitting on your drawing table and see what type of portrait you might get out of it. Remember it’s OK to take a break from ink. (I know, gasp, but we need to use the tools we feel drawn to on the day.)
Have some fun adventuring.
