Tuesday, January 25, 2011

water-pencils

Since my pregnancy, I've been dragging my feet on updating this blog. There has been a steady stream of stuff to do, and not so much time to do the art I wanted to post. But 2 weeks ago, there was a sale at Michaels, and mom and me went. We dedicated about ten minutes to each aisle. Thats a lot of minutes, and a very heavy shopping cart. NEVER leave two artists and their purses alone at an art super-store featuring a post-holiday sale.

Anyway, the best thing I bought that day was a graphite watercolor pencil set. I have always wanted to try watercolor pencils because they seem too good to be true. The few times I've used them, I either didnt do it right, or it was a really cheap set, but the results have always been disappointing.

Historically, I had always been afraid of using color until I got to art school and took foundation classes. They taught me to use graphite pencils, and do black and white or mono-chromatic still lifes, and ironically, spending a year on those actually taught me how to think of and use color. So, I thought I'd apply the same rule to watercolor pencils. This is a model from a magazine who is my materials experiment.  I used the pencils to make every stroke the way I wanted it, before following those lines with water. The eye and lip are just normal watercolors.

5 comments: