WATER SOLUBLE PENCILS 3

I thought this might work.

I did the thumbnail above more or less absentmindedly, and noticed that the water soluble pencil soaked up the water.  In a more or less non thinking manner, I made a rectangle with a light red wash.  Then I used a water soluble pencil to make a few marks.  And inside the marks, when it dried, there was less of a red tone.  What occurred was that the water soluble pencil soaked up the wash as I drew.

I thought this was pretty cool.  It was as if I were making a positive drawing and a negative drawing at the same time.   (Negative drawing.  I just googled that, and of course there are you tube videos on this concept.  And of course they all address positive and negative “space” on a flat piece of paper.)

So I tried expanding this concept into a larger drawing.  And the drawing below is the result.

And it basically worked.  As you can see there was a soaking up of the watercolor tone.  For some of the lines.  But not all of the lines.  I’m thinking that what is going on is that when you first apply the water soluble pencil to the wet paper, because the pencil lead is dry, it soaks up water quickly.  With an increasingly wet led, it basically stops soaking up the tone.

Something to try in the future.  Get about 4 water soluble pencils ready.  Apply the wash.  Start to draw.  When it appears that the pencil is no longer soaking up the water, change pencils.

At any rate, it is a fun technique.  There is something very cool about drawing on a wet piece of paper.  And with the color tone, there is more interaction than if you simply applied water to the paper.

I will have more water soluble pencil drawings in the near future.  Keep drawing.