Some trouble with watercolor pencil/crayon underpaintings

I worked on this piece yesterday. I wish I would have taken some progress shots, but I just plowed through it. I did a full underpainitng using Neocolor II's and Spectracolor watercolor pencils. Not just blocking in colors like I did on the bags, but tried to do a painting under the drawing with the correct colors and values as the end result but less detailed. Then the plan was to fill out and refine the watercolor painting with dry colored pencils. This was done on grey Pastelbord.

I decided to do this because the board I had is a dark grey and I needed the colors to be vibrant for this spring pic. The underpainting would hopefully kill that grey from coming through my pencil and killing the color. That is true, my colors are evry vibrant.... hmmmm maybe too vibrant.

Well I struggled with it as I have with some other watercolor pencil/dry colored pencil paintings. First off the neos and h2o penicls aren't like putting a wash of watercolor paint - they are pencils and leave a residue, even after dissolving with water, that limits the amounts of layers you put over it. Also, as I found with the background, if you decide the color you put down with the watercolor was not correct, it is very hard to change the color. You wouldn't believe how many layers I had to squeeze onto that background to alter the hue of the neocolor wash.

I find that after putting watercolor pencil or neocolor II that not only do you have less layers to work with, but because of the residue you also have to use much more pressure, so you are essentially pushing the pencil on or are already in a burnished state. I don't enjoy this, and neither does my wrist! It also makes it harder to put in little highlights that I needed to add on the flower petals. Putting dark over them is not a problem, its putting lighter more vibrant detailed pencil that is the problem. This is something that I love about working with sanded papers, that they allow me to put highlights in whenever I want, so losing that ability is very disappointing to me.

Its funny that it has taken me this long to figure out what I was struggling with and what FELT wrong when working over the h2o pencils/crayons. I've been able to get decent results, but with using extra time and struggling the whole way.

So my conclusion is that for me, I will use watercolor pencils and neocolor II's sparingly for underpaintings. I've found them great for dark black backgrounds and for paintings that don't have small important details. They worked great for the bags which were abstract and details could be left out, but also where I layered dark over light watercolor instead of the other way around.

3 Methods of Watercolor pencil/crayon Underpaintings

EDIT: I've had an epiphany and have figured out what I wasn't liking about watercolor pencils/crayons under dry but couldn't pinpoint! Its on my next post coming up! I'll link it here when I finish writing it.

First off, I did decide to cut apart my triptych, and I do like it much better this way. I will be doing the one larger, but i have to wait until I have other things to order before I get my big board to save on shipping.

I promised to give my opinions and experience of using watercolor pencils/crayons underneath dry colored pencil.

I tried underpaintings in a few different ways. On this last abstract bag duo, I did very simple shapes of color underneath dry colored pencil on tan board. I chose the lightest color I saw in each plane of the bag so when I added dark pencil on top the lighter color showed through and gave a glow to the overall piece. I also added white watercolor crayon underneath the boldly lit areas.

This method worked very well, and the light effects of it are spectacular with the light catching those lighter colors underneath. Plus you just can not get that bright of a white with dry pencil on pastelbord - the watercolor white really helped lighten it up.

I used Neocolor II watersoluable crayons which can easily be made to cover large spaces quickly. The fact that a little goes a long way is very desireable if working on a big piece.

In these bag drawings I deliberately did not do any details at all with the watercolor crayons - just very simple blocked in colors all over the board. I didn't try and smooth the dry pencil out on top of the neocolor because I didn't want to lose the feeling of the color coming through and the optical mixing that would get lost if I blended things in with dry pencil.





So pros of this method I would say are:

• great light effects
• can achieve wonderful saturated color
• can achieve the "glow" effect by layering light colors first
• can achieve very bright whites (not attainable with dry pencil on colored board alone)
• Texture has character
• Texture allows Optical Mixing of colors and the light colors to shine through
• the watercolor fills in the tooth so you don't get the color of the board coming through and can achieve darks darks and lighter lights

Cons:

• Texture is not smooth, which is sometimes ideal with realism
• Is a whole different experience than sitting leisurely with dry pencils
• Short drying time added in
  
  

& now a look at a couple of other ways I've used watercolor underpaintings:

This piece was done with Caran D'Ache Spectracolors underneath dry Luminance and Pablo pencils on WHITE Pastelbord.

This again worked very well. I wanted to achieve the look of the transparent glass and the watercolor pencils really helped me achieve that.

On this one I did a more detailed watercolor pencil underpaintings and then used the dry pencils to smooth things out and to "fix up" areas that got away from me with the wet media.

The part I didn't like with the watercolor panting on this one was that it made rendering the paper a little more difficult. Maybe because I have done paper so many times with dry pencil, but I felt like it was a struggle instead of a smooth experience. The glass on the other hand was BLISS! The colored pencils smoothed things out wonderfully if I wanted them to, but lost the optical mixing that I achieved in the last images of the lit bags.


ANOTHER experiment:

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This one was done with a very finished Spectracolor underpaitning on white board. The Spectracolor pencils have white in them to tint the different colors ( to get pinks, light greys etc) instead of relying on the amount of water mixed with the pencil. I think this is common with watercolor pencils. What that means however, is if you do an underpainting using a variety of tints and shades of a color, then you will not get a transparent watercolor look, but a look more like gauche. At first I didn't like this effect, but the more I look at it, the more I like it.

I think I would like to try more with this method - I mean look at that chalky blue bottle!

A work in Progress!

More experimenting with watercolor pencils.

This is 11 x 14" overall and so far I've put 6 nonstop hours into it. I'm not even half way through yet.

More Experimenting

As with the last piece, the portrait of Obama, this drawing is done on white pastelbord with a watercolor pencil underpainting and then a build up of dry colored pencil on top. I actually took photos of the steps and deleted them by accident, so sorry about that!

This piece is successful in some ways and not in others. I should have left that vase all the way to the right out to create a less balanced, or I should say a more as symmetrically balanced, composition. I've named it "Regular Intervals" because it was just a simple experiment to line the objects to feel like they were equidistant apart.

The technique though I think was successful. I wish you could see what it looks like better. Not only is this a poor photo (with a portion out of focus) but you just can't appreciate the subtle textures as in real life. Usually I work with just a dry application on the Pastelbord, and keep the sand paper like even texture all over the piece. This new technique (for me) has a more "painterly feel" where you can see brush strokes, and just a bit more depth in the pencil itself. Also, since it is on white board instead of colored, I can reach a better range of values. The drawings on colored board always has the lightest lights knocked back by the influence of the board color. I think I'll throw in a few of these now and again. I'd love to know what you think of the new technique!

So I noticed quite a few of you mentioned liking the vertical still-lifes I've done. I'll try to make more of those. I find those compositions so challenging that I get tuckered out after doing one!

One nice bit of info I just found out - you can get podcasts from all the major art museums for free and download them super easily in the Ipod store. So glad I found this out - now I'll have something to listen to while I draw besides Harry Potter over and over!

Thanks for looking and if you read all of that, reading too!

Out of the Ordinary

I only like doing portraits for fun and every once in a while I get the urge. I couldn't help myself with this one after seeing my friend Dan White's photos.

I was also wanting to try using my Supracolor (Caran D'Ache) watercolor pencils on white board mixed with regular colored pencils. I had fun with it - even though I intended to keep more of the loose watercolor feel. Oops.

Its 6" x 18" on white pastelbord and it only took 3-4 hours!

But I don't know what I'll do with it???

Click on the picture to enlarge