Left: Painting of a pelican made using using Cretacolor Aqua Briques on gesso-coated paper. This image is cropped from an 11 x 14 inch image. As often happens with my paintings I don't like the full image. I'm interested in something closer. The height here is about 11 inches. I prepared watercolor paper with two coats of gesso, allowing my brush strokes to show (this creates interesting texture when paint is applied later) and then sketched (with light graphite) a pelican taxidermy specimen that was hanging from the ceiling of the Mississippi Wildlife Refuge building. (That's not really fun for the neck.) Color was added with strokes of the Aqua Briques which were blended with a large synthetic watercolor brush and water and sometime my thumb (see yellow portion at top left of bird's head). Click the image to view an enlargement.

In the summer of 2006 I picked up a 10-color can of a new product: Cretacolor Aqua Briques. I enjoy experimentation, especially when I can report back to students and friends and maybe help them find a tool they can really enjoy. But I am also always looking for a way to get the texture I want in  my paintings.

For several years I wrote product reviews on a Yahoo list that I had for friends and past students. I stopped keeping this list when I started blogging in 2008. Since that time a number of new students in my classes, as well as readers of my blog, have asked me about Aqua Briques.

This interest and the fact that there many artists who like to draw and paint led me to think readers of this blog would enjoy hearing about my field tests of a tool that functions both ways. What follows is a revised version of my original review.