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| Eep, I suck at watercolors :( |
Hello, everyone! I mentioned in my previous post that I'd talk about watercolor pencils; the ones that I have (or borrowed, rather) are a 36-pencil Derwent set, one of my favorite brands of art pencils.
Now, watercolors have never really been my forte (and I don't think they ever will be!), but I find these watercolor pencils easy to handle because they act just like ordinary pencils, which I'm already familiar with. Funny thing is, though, I use them like anything but pencils; the way I paint with them is the way I paint with my acrylics, that is, straight from the tube - or, in this case, straight from the tip of the pencil.
They're fun to use, but of course they've got their cons; for one thing, they're not really suitable for drawing details, especially if you're using textured paper - which is most watercolor paper, really. Even if I sharpen the pencils to a point, (for which I always use a blade/ cutter rather than an actual sharpener; you lose less lead that way, apparently), they still leave a rather granulated trail on the paper. Also, when you wet a particularly large penciled area, the lead tends to bunch up at the edge of the water, creating an outline darker than the rest of the area, and this becomes a problem especially when you want to do some smooth overlapping:
Thus I stick to taking the paint straight off the pencil tip; it achieves a much cleaner effect, in my opinion. But I'm not really one to talk, I actually think I suck at watercolors. For the painting above, I was completely unsure of myself when I was working on it; there were so many times I paused and thought, 'What am I doing?' I'm sure you can see my struggle in the painting; the face is completely botched because I had/ have no idea which colors constitute to skin color. Well, it's fun to do, nonetheless, enough for me to continue painting it to its finish. I still enjoy myself for the most part, and at least I get some practice out of it. I'm definitely going to try more; can't let all those pencils and watercolor paper I bought go to waste!
By the way, I made a Flickr account for my artworks; I have some artworks posted there that can't be seen in this blog, so please check them out here! :) Also, a very BIG hug to my new followers, I'm so happy you like my work! Please do drop a hello now and then :) Take care!