Blazing Oak (and Technique Notes)

 

10/23/25 Maple Leaf neighborhood

On my morning walk when I didn’t have my white Hahnemühle sketchbook, I still wanted to remember this blazing orange oak growing out of a traffic circle. An orange acrylic marker and Uglybook would have to do.

Driving home from an errand that afternoon, I had planned to stop and sketch the oak again, this time in full color, so I grabbed the Hahnemühle. It was my last outdoor sketch before days of rain set in.

The same oak in the afternoon of the same day.

Technique notes: The full-color sketch here, made with Museum Aquarelle pencils, is a good example of something I mentioned last week about how Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble crayons have taught me tricks to use with those colored pencils.

I used to apply crayons dry to dry paper, then activate with water. With practice, I found that I could get more vibrant, thorough activation when I wet the paper generously first, then appled dry crayon to the wet paper. This technique isn’t new to me; I’ve been using dry-on-wet pencils for several years, too. But because Museum Aquarelles activate more easily and readily, I usually don’t need to take it further. The waxier crayons take more water to fully activate, so I sometimes reapply water and apply another layer of color.

In the sketch above, I used only pencils in a similar fashion while keeping the paper fairly wet. What I really like is that as the paper began to dry, the top-most (orange) layer showed more texture, giving the tree a nice foliage effect. To be honest, hitting the paper at just the right degree of wetness is usually a crapshoot and not something I know how to fully gauge (as most watercolor painters also experience). It’s nice when it happens just right, though.