Landrover Discovery

I'm about three hours in with this piece, including the longed out coffee and chat when I began on Tuesday and the pot of Assam B.O.P. when I revisited the artwork this afternoon.

ArtRba Photograph: ink pencil on watercolour paper 

It's intended as a gift, so I hope that the recipient likes it when it's done.  I'm using Daler Rowney 300gsm A4 size Cold Pressed watercolour paper.  I drew a grid using a watercolour pencil to lay out the design with an intention to wash away the grid lines as I construct the image. The dust cloud is a tad heavy at the moment, but I'm looking to soften that by applying an Inktense wash using a brush, and or a white Pablo colouring pencil.  It doesn't really matter whether that works or not, as it's all about learning and experience. Art is for enjoyment and relaxation; we mustn't get too hung up over techniques and outcomes. 

Venice, Inktense Pencils on paper

This is today's output, well when I say today, I mean finished today after two hours per week for six weeks. It's an image of the Grand Canal Venice, drawn in Inktense Pencils on a piece of old discarded paper at MIND that was probably heading towards being thrown out.

ArtRba Photograph; Venice, Inktense Pencils on paper

(Click on the image to open it full size)

This one is a gift for someone who attends the same weekly art group as me.

How to No.7 Forming a Sky with Inktense Pencils on COLD watercolour paper

The sky in this new Venetian image was created with just three Derwent Inktense Pencil colours: Willow 1900, Navy Blue 0830 and Sun Yellow 0200.  The Navy Blue pencil appears to be as close as I can tell to Ultramarine, whereas I've chosen Willow as my 'Burnt Umber'.  Using Ultramarine and Burnt Umber in watercolour gives you some nice blues and darks and creates various greys.  Albeit that grey is not my favourite. Nope, I prefer to use Prussian Blue and wait for it. . . Venetian Red.  So no surprises there then, especially given my predominantly Venice themed art.

Photo: Sky over Venice using just three pencils

All rights reserved R. Bennett 2016 (as is the case with all of my art and poetry)

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The sky shown in this Inktense Pencil image is loosely based on part of an article in the current edition of 'The Artist' a monthly magazine coming in with a shop price of £3.99 and a reduced price if you sign up to home delivery.  I think that it's a good value for money magazine.  It found its way into my life, when a lovely person in the south of the County was giving away a huge number of back issues free of charge.  At the beginning, I extracted the watercolour information pages and gave the rest of the magazine away.  Now I seem to be finding lots that grab my interest, so after reading an issue, I deposit them with MIND for others to share and for me to have ready access in the future.  

I say 'loosely' based upon, because the artist reviewed on several pages including page 51 (where this sky formation appears) is using watercolours, whereas I'm dabbling with my current holiday favourite media, i.e. Inktense Pencils.  Careful observation of my uploaded image (if it doesn't all show, as with all photographs on Blogger, just click on the photo for it to fully open) will show a significant number of colours in the sky.  This seems to be a pretty cool effect, from using just three Inktense pencils.  This is one of the joys of any water based medium; you can move the colour around, dab in bits elsewhere, lift colour to lighten an area, layer colours, and blend colours together to create variations of colour on the page.  Although with Inktense Pencils it is worth remembering that you are dealing with ink, and once dry, the product is primarily colourfast and unlike watercolours, it resists further movement or lifting.  

One final note, is for you to preserve some white in your image.  This of course gives you an extra colour in whatever colour spectrum that you are using.  Plus, nothing is as bright as the white of the paper.