Natural Activation

 

10/11/23 Maple Leaf neighborhood (Caran d'Ache and Derwent watercolor pencils and Seattle rain in Hahnemuhle sketchbook)

After a few days of heavy, continuous rain, “sun breaks” lit up the sky on Wednesday afternoon. I dashed out for a walk-sketch. I guess I put too much blind faith in my weather app, which said I had at least a half-hour before more rain was expected. The drizzle turned to full-on rain halfway through my 10-minute sketch, above (see Murphy’s Laws of Urban Sketching No. 2). A new watercolor pencil technique: natural activation.

9/25/23 Uni 4B graphite in Field Notes Expedition

Putting a Kleenex between the pages so that the wet sketch wouldn’t smear the adjacent page when I closed the book, I felt stupid when the thought came to me like a V-8 moment: Why don’t I keep a few non-soluble colored pencils in my bag during the wet-weather months?

When it’s drizzly as I’m heading out for my walk, I usually grab my waterproof Field Notes Expedition, which works well with soft graphite but not at all with colored pencils (and certainly not water-soluble ones). But I don’t think I’ve ever tried using non-soluble colored pencils on slightly wet watercolor paper. Stay tuned for a field test.