Thornton Creek Media Tests

 

9/12/26 Thornton Creek Channel (non-soluble colored pencils)

It’s mid-September, and that can mean only one thing: I’m gearing up for both InkTober and Pencilvember! For the past few years, I’ve been devoting each challenge month to a specific subject theme, such as ears or pets, with all drawings done from photo references. This year, I thought I’d go back to my roots of trying to draw as much as possible from life and without a theme. The challenge would be to stick to one medium that I rarely use for any length of time. It’s an effective way to get past any resistance and to practice a medium that doesn’t come easily. (Years ago, using ballpoint pens exclusively during InkTober got me to really enjoy and appreciate the medium.)

 

Derwent Drawing and a couple of Prismacolors

Without making commitments yet, I recently took a couple of media out with me to Thornton Creek Channel to see how they might do. Derwent Drawing pencils (or dry colored pencils in general) are a definite contender for Pencilvember. For a month now, I’ve been anticipating that fall might be a great time to give these pencils a solid try on location. As mentioned in that previous post, my plan would be to stay small with my sketches so that they would remain relatively fast. I’ve been so dependent on water to do the heavy lifting of building strong values with water-soluble pencils or crayons that using non-soluble pencils would be time-consuming. Or would it? Maybe this is a good time to see what shortcuts or techniques I can develop to make this medium more on-location friendly.

The sketch above, about two-thirds of an A5-ish page in my Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook, probably took twice as long as a similar size sketch using water-soluble materials. I’ll have to go even smaller for the same efficiency.

Staedtler Pigment Arts Brush Pens

I’m less certain about my candidate InkTober. For this trial run, I took a small set of Staedtler Pigment Arts Brush Pens, which I learned about from Roz Stendahl several months ago. Containing waterproof, pigment-based ink, they are similar to Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Brush pens, which I’ve been using for many years. The Staedtler pens are significantly cheaper than Faber-Castell, however. I go through Pitt pens fairly rapidly, especially Cold Gray III, which has long been a favorite for shading. The last time I needed to reorder Pitts, I thought I’d give Staedtler a try.

6 of the 12 colors in the "Nature" set

Although the lower price is appealing, one major disadvantage of the Staedtlers is that they aren’t available open stock. I chose the set of 12 “Nature” colors, which has a decent selection for landscape and urban sketching. I sort of enjoy the challenge of a limited, pre-selected palette that I didn’t even choose myself. But for 31 days during the height of fall color? I might need to supplement with Pitt brush pens, which I own in a much wider color range.

Perhaps the greater hurdle with brush markers is that I have never cared for the marker-ish look. My engineer brother once described the violin as analog (the ability to modulate from one note to the next) while the piano is digital (on or off). Along the same lines, colored pencils (or almost any dry media) are analog, while markers are digital. If I compare the two sketches here of the same scene, I certainly prefer the modulated look of colored pencils. (I didn’t like my recent attempts at Jimi Hendrix Park at all.) Maybe I just haven’t learned to use markers in a way that appeals to me.

Who knows – maybe I’ll declare December mixed-media month and use colored pencils and markers together! Past attempts usually haven’t been satisfying; brush markers have a way of taking over the party, no matter who else is in the room. But if art challenges like InkTober and Pencilvember aren’t for learning, why take part? I’m game.

This is the thumbnail I made to test the values and composition before
making the color sketches. The best part of it is the comment I overheard.