Drawing and Watercolor Pencils

 

 

I got through finals week just in time to get ready to do another craft show this Saturday. Lucky for me, it’s in town and there is no travel time. The down side is the blasted heat!!! I hope Saturday – the 4th of July – turns out to be a lovely 70 degrees. (lol)

After such an intense few weeks studying Shakespeare and writing two major papers, I desperately needed to do something creative. I happened to be reading the Craftsy blog and there was an article about watercolors with this pretty picture of flowers. So, I hopped on over. I’ve been trying to get my nerve up to draw and paint some flowers. After everything I said here, I figured I better jump in and do it.

Here is the link to the Craftsy post, so you can do the tutorial too.

First, I drew the picture on some smooth drawing paper. Just to see how it would turn out. I wasn’t going to waste my good watercolor paper on a terrible drawing. However, I was pleasantly surprised! It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

pencil drawing

 

pen and ink

I drew it again on watercolor paper, and then drew over it with a Micron pen. You can see my pencil marks. I wanted the ink to set well before I erased to avoid ink smears.

watercolor flowers

 

This is the first layer of watercolor. I used my watercolor pencils, rather than dragging out the actual watercolors. I wish I hadn’t. Too many pencil marks are visible. The green of the leaves, stems and grass do not contrast enough, and I didn’t leave any white. (See the picture on the Craftsy blog)

second layer watercolor flowers

 

The second layer of color, I did add some depth to the flowers. I added some darker green to the leaves, but now the stems are lost. And my blue wash for the sky is not as washy as I would like it. HOWEVER 🙂 I love that I was able to produce a picture of flowers and you can recognize everything in it!

drawing5

 

Closeups

 

 

 

drawing4

 

I’m pretty excited about this picture and will be drawing it again and using watercolor paints, not pencils. I don’t mind that all the petals are not perfect, but the pencil marks really bother me. I tried adding more water to soften them, but it didn’t work the way I thought it would.

redbar

 

What do you prefer – pencils or paints? I’d love to hear

from a watercolor beginner!

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