Watercolor Pencil Techniques - Part 2

Today is very exciting for me!  I begin as a Design Team member on the CAS (Clean and Simple) Colours & Sketches blog!  I was a guest designer last fall and am now a member of the design team.

This week's challenge is a sketch challenge.  Here is the sketch that was posted:

My card today uses the same stamp set as yesterday - Stampin' Up! Friendship's Sweetest Thoughts, however rather than a traditional watercolor look, I wanted a smoother casual look.  I thought this went with the look of the stamps and the sentiment that I used (from Bird Banter).

For this image I used Shimmery White card stock NOT watercolor or mixed media paper.  I know that yesterday I said you must use one of those, but that was if you are using a brush with water.  This card uses a blender pen.  For those who feel watercolor is too loose and uncontrolled - this combo of pencils and a blender pen will be right up your alley!

After stamping the image, start by loosely coloring over the branches and leaves with pencil.

Then use the blender pen to LIGHTLY (I can't emphasize lightly enough) go over your pencil to blend it out.  The pen has water and glycerin in it and when used lightly will not pill the Shimmery White card stock as it has a coating on it.  If you press too hard you will disrupt the coating and the card stock will pill.  (You can use mixed media or watercolor paper with blender pens, but I like the smoothness of the Shimmery White for stamping.)

I love this way of working with watercolor pencils and you can see by the first close-up that you can get some nice shading even when you have colors near one another that you don't want to combine.  In this case the red and blue.  Since you don't have water that is running you can be much more controlled.

If you want to intensify color, try taking pigment directly off the tip of the pencil with the blender pen.  You will get some very nice intense shading. To clean the pen tip just wipe it off on scratch paper until it no longer gives any color.  The tip may remain stained but this won't effect it's use.

This card uses a sentiment from another set.  Mixing sentiments from one set with another set is a great way to get more mileage from them, but you need to be keenly aware of style.  Both of the sets I used are lighthearted casual styles and their sentiments work well with the graphics from the other set.  I'll discuss mixing and using fonts, sentiments and graphics more in a future post (one could probably write a book on that - I'm guessing one has already been written!)

Here are the supplies I used.  (Please use Hostess code 2BQK2KJZ when placing an order. If you order $150 of products-before tax and shipping-do not use the code so YOU get the hostess benefits.)

Stamps - Stampin' Up! Friendship's Sweetest Thoughts,  Bird Banter
Stampin' Up! Watercolor Pencils
Stampin' Up! Blender Pens
Shimmery White Card Stock
Basic Black Archival Ink

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