Monday, August 9, 2010

Floyd Continues: Adding Watercolor Pencils!

Illustrations for Floyd and the Mysterious Night Time Noise are still in progress. Another phase of color work starts with dry watercolor pencil work.

After the backgrounds are blocked in with basic watercolors (see last blog post), I start to add the color into the small detail areas using one of my favorite media, watercolor pencils! They are fun to use and give me more control with the same effects of regular watercolor. I also like the combination of soft and rough textures I can get with them which works great for dog hair!


I use a few different brands of pencils. My favorite are my Aquarelles, currently made by Derwent. I still have most of the set which I bought when I visited Quebec in high school. So they were worth the investment! I also use Crayola and Prismacolor. Crayola is inexpensive yet great quality and vibrant. Prismacolor have a great selection of colors, but the outsides are all the same color of natural wood and its hard to tell what color you are reaching for. Hope they change that in future sets.



I use both heavy and light applications of the pencils to create a range of values. I can overlap to create color mixes. I also like to add interesting shading effects using these pencils as well. They are harder to erase, so at this point, its good to make sure you are apply the colors you really what, where you want them. I add the dry watercolor pencil into a bunch of the illustrations, and when I get through with that, I start the last stage, which I’ll write about in my next post!

No comments:

Post a Comment