Tuesday, January 26, 2010

two ladies and a wash

I had the urge to practice drawing things in front of me (I don't want to say "real" - things in our imagination are real too, right?) and I've long wanted to draw the pendant on one of my favorite necklaces. I had originally planned to try a pen drawing on top of the acrylic painted background shown earlier, but this time I felt like playing with my watersoluble pencils.

I ended up with two versions, both drawn in the same colours graphitint pencil -chestnut and indigo, with one washed with a bit of plain water, the other left dry. The dry one is more subdued in colour.
lady, unwashed

It's amazing how much colour shows up when you add water - colour that isn't really even perceptible in they dry version. So much tint came off in my waterbrush that I used it to paint in a bit of shadow, which wasn't actually in the drawn version at all.
lady, washed

I'm not sure which effect I like best, but this encourages me to do more experimentation with these. They're just Derwent Graphitint pencils,  more subtle and earthier in colour than the regular watercolor or Inktense, but equally easy to use. Just a bit more surprising when wet. I should note that they're on different papers - the dry version in an Exacompta sketchbook, the wet in a Canson. But both similar weight, and lightly textured. Aside from the creamier colour of the Exacompta paper, I would expect similar colour shifts to happen to the pencil drawing when wet in both books.

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