Watercolour pencils

To my absolute amazement, I am enjoying my expedition into pencils, overcoming a lifetime aversion to them.  I remember being pretty awful at drawing at school, blunt pencils, no idea what to look for, no idea how to begin, with others around me doing accurate, careful, BELIEVABLE drawings.   I there and then decided that I couldn’t draw and have been convinced of that ever since.

Our weekly “no peeking” drawing sessions were beginning  to beat down the barriers.  Without them, I would never have even considered painting with pencils. But the fortuitous publication of the article in “Leisure Painter” and my frustration that circumstances were cutting into painting time , galvanised me into action.  I have bought a box of 20 landscape watercolour pencils from Caran D’ Arche, giving me a good selection of related tones,  and the recommended  hot pressed paper pad.

This is my first attempt – a very simple landscape.  I did the drawing and dry colour over an hour and a half in comfortable companionship in the sitting room, adding the water to the painting while waiting for the dinner to cook!  There is a tendency to colour between the lines which I must guard against.  The direction and style of brush stroke informs the way the wetted paint reacts and I also discovered that much more intense colour is released if I work into the wet surface.

So I tried again with a more complicated view.    Here is the pencil work, again produced quietly over time.

And here I have added water.  The picture warms as the paint is released, but some of the textures are retained (intentionally!)  This is going to be an exciting project after all, not just a way of coping with circumstance.  Living is a wonderful thing.