Watercolor Pencils

One of my favorite coloring mediums is Watercolor Pencils. I'm not good with watercolor painting but I can make my images look like watercolor with these great colored pencils.

1. To do this medium, you will need Watercolor Pencils(#101879), blender pens(#102845) or Aqua Painter (#103954), StazOn Ink(#101406) and your image. Many people use watercolor paper(#122959) which is supposed to make it look really great but I've always just used white cardstock. The image that I used today is from The Nicest Things (#120531) stamp set.

It is best to use StazOn ink or another permanent ink because the blending fluid or water might cause the classic ink outline to smear.

2. Stamp a nice clear image on your white cardstock or watercolor paper with the black StazOn ink. The StazOn is very difficult to get off of your rubber stamp but it doesn't hurt any stamping that you do later.

3. Remember, when you were in elementary school and your teacher taught you how to outline your pictures? While that is what we want to do here. Choose the color pencil that you want to work with and outline in the area. Also, go down any lines that are in the image. Color out a little bit from the outline but do not color the image solid.

4. Next, with a clean blender pen, apply the blending fluid or water onto the color that you applied. Pull the color with the pen into the areas where you didn't not put any color. In this way, you will get the color into the other areas without overwhelming the image. It will give you a lighter color in the center which is what you want to make it look like watercolor.

5. Every so often, you want to wipe the tip of your blender pen on scratch paper to rub the extra color off of the pen. You do not want too much color to build up on the pen or you won't get the subtle shading that you want. You also want to do this between colors to clean the tip of the pen before you start the next color.

6. Finish all of the areas where you want to use that color. Then go on to the next color and repeat the process until you have your entire picture complete. You can then mount it on colored cardstock to use in your card or scrapbook project.

Hope you enjoy coloring as much as I do. On Thursday, I'll talk about another coloring method that I enjoy, pastels or chalks.