Experimenting…

A friend bought me a set of watercolour pencils for my birthday, so of course I had to sit straight down and mess about with them!

I wanted to see what the colours looked like, but I also experimented with the way I used the pencils. The weird blob of colours (on the left) was my first attempt, drawing with the pencils first then adding water and blending afterwards. For the flower (right), I wet the paper first and then drew straight into the water.

And I was really startled by the difference between the two methods. Pencil first: subtle, soft, pale. Water first: vibrant (to put it mildly!). It’ll be really interesting trying it out on some proper artwork and seeing what happens.