Water, water everywhere

Posted on December 5, 2015 Updated on December 5, 2015

This week’s lesson was on how to use watercolour pencils – a versatile but often overlooked medium. Is there anyone who doesn’t have a box in their collection but isn’t sure what to do with them?

We all had a go at using them, with varying results… at least using the skooshers was good fun.

Busy class learning watercolour pencils

Using watercolour pencils

Using watercolour pencils

Using watercolour pencils

Using watercolour pencils

Using watercolour pencils

Spencer gets skooshing!

Fishes, using watercolour pencils

Flowers using watercolour pencils

Watercolour pencils

Colourful flower

Angus talked about a number of different ways to use watercolour pencils:

• adding the colour to areas of a drawing and then washing over with water to achieve a pale effect;
• using a normal white pencil to ‘mask’ parts of the painting: when you paint over the top with watercolour, the coloured pencil should stay fixed; and
• adding details to watercolour painting.

Skull using watercolour pencils

Skull using watercolour pencils

Fish using watercolour pencils

Flowers using watercolour pencils

Masking

Masking

Masking with white pencil

He also talked about the different effects that can be achieved by using the watercolour pencils in different ways:

• dry pencil on dry paper
• dry pencil on damp paper – allows good coverage
• dry pencil on wet paper – creates strong lines of colour, making the watercolour pencil a ‘weapon of colour’.