Derwent Inktense & Watercolour Pencils

At the weekend I got some time to play with my lovely Derwent pencils. I must admit my natural instinct when it comes to colouring pencils is to reach for the Coloursoft pencils, they are so great to work with, they blend easy and I can get my usual bright bold and colourful look with them. I'm not really very good with watercolours, I find the overall result (in my hands at least!) to be too wishy washy and too messy, but I thought I would be brave and have a go with the Watercolour and Inktense pencils and see if I could get to grips with them and the differences between them.

I started with the Watercolour pencils, I used them to colour a stamped image using a water brush (also from Derwent) to blend. I don't think I have ever coloured in a stamped image before (and it probably shows!) I used a Staz-on Ink pad as these are solvent based and so won't bleed into your colours as you add water. The stamp is an old one from PSX that I've had for about 10 years.

I started by stamping my image and using the darkest red to shade the shadowy areas. I did make a few smudges as you can probably see! but on the whole I found it much easier than watercolours and much easier than I was expecting!!

As I got braver I started using strips of colour to boldly highlight the light and shade areas and using the waterbrush to blend them - as with the leaf below.

On the whole it took me far less time to colour this than it would have done with watercolours and I found it much easier. I definitely need some more practice though!!

While I was still feeling brave I broke open the Inktense Pencils, I stamped my image with Staz on again and started shading the face ready to blend with the water brush....

But as you can see in pic 2 I didn't take into account that when you add water to these the colour POPS, really seriously it looked like my witch had had a run in with a spray tan - BAD! luckily using the water brush I used lots of water to flood the area (do this slowly or it will smudge) and blot using kitchen towel, this reduced her luminous orange glow down to a healthy tan - she maybe just flew her broomstick too close to the sun one day!! LOL. The bold colours really appealed to me and overall I think I preferred them for that reason. Here is my final result....

As you can see I still made a few smudges, but I thought it was not bad for a first attempt! and you can still get a more subtle finish if you use the pencils very lightly (as I did on the background here..) I added some distress stickles to the background on the finished image and added to my card (using MME papers and Halloween ribbon from Crafty Ribbons, I can't remember where the Spider button came from, I think someone sent it me as part of an art swap,.)

Both pencils were very easy to use, overall I prefer the Inktense for the vibrant finish but if you prefer a more subtle tone then the Watercolour is the way to go, they would be great for vintage / shabby chic projects! I definitely will be getting in some more practice with both - I need it!!

Now back to the drawing board for me (literally!!)

Sarah x

p.s. if you're looking for the DT call you need to scroll all the way to the bottom and maybe even go back a page now I've done this epic post! :o)