It's Friday and welcome to the CLASSroom! This week at Ellen Hutson LLC we've been featuring colored pencils and lots of wonderful techniques with them. Today I'm sharing a card and a look at how to use watercolor pencils, in particular, the Faber-Castell Art Grip Aquarelle Watercolor Pencils.
Colored pencils take a fun twist with watercolor pencils. It's a combo of both a colored pencil and a watercolor pigment so that there's lots of fun ways to use them!
I love the look you can get from adding water to watercolor pencils and it really makes blending a breeze. I've used them to color this sweet watercolor paper panel which is a fun and quick way to create a great card focal point and sentiment at the same time.
These sweet Taylored Expressions Watercolor Panels are what I used to create my design. They are perfect for card or ATCs or scrapbooking accents. You can even slip them inside a card as a little gift. You can color them with markers or regular colored pencils, etc. but the watercolor paper really lends itself especially well to watercoloring. There's a few different styles and packages of these great panels available so be sure to check them out. I've used the Inspire package for this project.
These eco-friendly pencils are patented to prevent breakage and have an ergonomic soft-GRIP® dot design. Art GRIP® Aquarelle Watercolor Pencils allow you to add watercolor painting effects to your projects. Simply use a wet paintbrush (included) to brush over your design and the water-soluble leads turn into soft, rich watercolor. Apply a wash of color to stamped images or create beautiful backgrounds for cards and scrapbook pages. Unlike other pencils, Art GRIP® pencils are glued the full length of the barrel for long-lasting break resistance and have comfy GRIP® dots and stylish triangular shape. The watercolor pigments dissolve completely and are permanent, waterproof and lightfast when dry so you can create layer upon layer of beautiful watercolor effects that will last a lifetime!
Creating the project is simple and these watercolor pencils make it super easy and portable to watercolor on the go. Simply use the watercolor pencils to color in the areas you wish. You can even blend colors together by coloring an area with one color over another. The points on the pencil make it really easy to get pigment exactly where you want it.
Once you are done coloring, all you need to do is add a little water to blend.
I wanted to add a little more color and depth to some of the areas so I started experimenting with how best to do that. You can see how I've added extra pigment to the bottom half of the larger block letter words. I found the best way to do this was to use your pencil just like a brush! Simply dip the pencil in water and you can actually draw on the areas with the wet pigment and it lays down a LOT of color at once!
Here's what it looks like. The first area is a dry scribble of a dry watercolor pencil. The second area is the same scribble only it has been mixed with water afterwards and then blended out. You can see how you can get an easy graduation of color. I really love how well these Faber-Castell Aquarelles blend out. I've tried watercolor pencils in the past that did NOT work well but I'm loving how well these ones work!
Area three is a simple dry pencil line and it is show to contrast with how the next area looks. When you dip the pencil first in water and then draw a line, in area four you'll see just how much more pigment you can lay down for an accent.
And while I didn't use this method in my design, I also want to show you another way to use these pencils. You can first scribble a lot of pigment onto some scrap paper to create a palette. I've added water to this section, then picked up the color with a wet brush and then used it to watercolor a simple flower. In this way you can use the pencils more like traditional watercolors if desired.
To add further detail to the text, I pulled out a White Uni-ball Impact Gel Pen to add in some highlights to the design.
Once the image panel was finished, I matted it and adhered it to my card base. The card base itself looks almost embossed with a tone on tone die-cut layered on it. It's also from Taylored Expressions and is called the Leafy Vine Cutting Plate.
Thanks so much for joining me today in the CLASSroom! I hope you've enjoyed yet another look at colored pencils and how to use them to create your own special works of heart!
Julia
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