Watercolor Pencils with Grisaille, Part 2

 

Another grisaille experiment

In Part 1 of my experiments with a grisaille, I followed Wendy Hollender’s technique as described in her book, The Joy of Botanical Drawing. Unhappy with those results and not enjoying the watercolor-based technique, I decided to make it easier on myself. Like my green mug effort, I used Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelles for the grisaille and Prismacolors for the dry pencil work afterwards. This time, however, I used a Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook, which has a smoother surface better suited to soft Prismacolors.

Keeping her basic grisaille concept in mind, I applied dry watercolor pencils directly to the sketchbook paper – first for tones and then for the overall local color (sorry – I forgot to photograph this step). After each application, I activated the layer and waited for it to dry completely. The drying time was still tedious, but at least I was taking better advantage of a unique property of water-soluble colored pencils, which is that they can be applied easily dry and activated later. For a penciler (not painter) like me, this is far easier than making small puddles of paint and applying them wet.

Grisaille made with dry watercolor pencils applied directly to paper, then activated.

Unfortunately, I made the same mistake of not having enough patience to keep applying stronger grisaille layers, so as before, the dry pencils did most of the work.

4/10/21 Museum Aquarelles and Prismacolors in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook

As I worked on this tomato sketch with Prismacolors, I had the same thoughts I had during the previous exercises with Hollender’s technique: Although I enjoy the slow, meditative process of applying multiple layers of dry colored pencils, I don’t enjoy waiting for paint to dry. Heck, if I enjoyed that, I might as well be a watercolor painter!

What I do enjoy is taking advantage of the unique properties of watercolor pencils – that they can be wet or dry as needed. They can do so much more work in a sketch than serving as only the grisaille. And yet the grisaille concept is worth pursuing! Onward to Part 3.

Watercolor Pencils with Grisaille, Part 1

The Hollender grisaille experiment

The use of the grisaille painting technique is familiar to me in two ways. My introduction to the concept was in Steve Reddy’s still life workshop years ago. He taught us how to use varying dilutions of India ink to tone a drawing first, then add watercolor over this grisaille. Since the tones of ink had already done the work of establishing the values, applying color afterwards was a no-brainer.

I never got into using his technique, mainly because using India ink on location was too fraught with peril. I kept the concept in mind, however. A few years later, I adapted it by using a range of gray Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens for the grisaille, then applying watercolor pencil over these tones. Eventually I decided I didn’t like the way the grisaille dulled the hues (in fact, that’s one reason I didn’t like using India ink dilutions with watercolor, either) and weaned myself off them. I also didn’t care for the marker-y look. I wanted to learn to develop values using the hues themselves. It’s a more challenging way to use color, and one that I still struggle with, but I prefer the clarity of hues and sparkle that show through without the grisaille.

So that’s my limited experience with the use of grisaille. Fast-forward to a couple of months ago when a blog reader recommended the book The Joy of Botanical Drawing, by Wendy Hollender. Using only watercolor pencils and traditional colored pencils, Hollender uses a grisaille method to make botanical illustrations. I’m always interested in learning new watercolor pencil techniques, so I picked up the book at my library.

Although many botanical illustrators use colored pencils, fewer seem to use watercolor pencils. Among the ones I know of, I think Hollender’s technique is unique. In a nutshell, and showing images from my first attempt, I’ll describe Hollender’s method. (Note: Although my process below may look like a “how-to,” it is really a “trying-to”! I am still stumbling along, so if you are interested in learning her technique, please read her book, as following what I do would be the blind leading the blind.)

First, apply dry watercolor pencil to a non-absorbent palette. One option she suggested was Yupo synthetic paper, and I happened to have a piece of Yupo Heavy from the sample pack of Legion Stonehenge papers that I reviewed for the Well-Appointed Desk. The heavier weight is ideal for this purpose. Hollender uses Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils, so I did, too. The pigment barely adheres to the plasticky, frictionless Yupo surface, so it’s difficult to build up a heavy swatch. She recommended a range of colors, but the basic concept is to use at least one neutral dark hue as the grisaille, plus the predominant local color of the subject.

Dry watercolor pencil applied to Yupo palette.

Using a small brush (I used my usual waterbrush), activate the pigment on the Yupo palette, making small puddles of watercolor.

Activate the pigment.

Apply the grisaille color (in my case, purple) to the drawing to establish the values. Allow that to dry completely, then apply more layers as needed, allowing each to dry before adding the next. As a final layer, apply the predominant local color (avoiding the highlight). This method is similar to the traditional watercolor glazing technique of applying multiple transparent layers of paint. (This was the hardest step for me – all that waiting for each layer to dry! How tedious! As a result, my tomato’s grisaille was way too wimpy; I was too impatient to follow up with a few more layers.)

Grisaille and main local color applied from the palette.

Finally, Hollender’s method is to use only dry colored pencils over the grisaille to finish the drawing. She prefers Faber-Castell Polychromos for this part, so that’s what I used, too. (Incidentally, Hollender uses a restricted palette of only a couple dozen pencil colors. She uses only Durer and Polychromos together, pairing each watercolor pencil with its corresponding match in the Polychromos palette. It’s an interesting way to work and far more practical than the huge colored pencil palettes some botanical artists favor.)

4/9/21 F-C Albrecht Durer and Polychromos pencils in S&B Beta sketchbook 
(before burnishing)

As a final step, burnish the drawing with a white or cream-colored pencil. The purpose of burnishing is to blend the colors further and flatten the paper’s tooth so that more pigment can be applied. I have not had much experience with burnishing, so I decided to give it a try on the tomato. Below is the final result after burnishing. Frankly, I don’t see enough difference to make it worth the effort, which took quite a bit of time.

Finished drawing after burnishing.

Overall, my wimpy grisaille didn’t help me much, and in fact, my sloppy application of the wet color hindered my application of dry layers afterwards. The sloppiness remained fully visible beneath the transparent colored pencil, so I spent additional time “fixing” spots I wasn’t happy with. To do this well, I need to work on my wet watercolor application technique and probably use a better brush.

The next day I decided to try the Hollender method again to sketch my green mug, this time using Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelles for the grisaille and Prismacolors for the dry application. Once again, my grisaille wasn’t strong enough, so the heavy lifting was done by the dry colored pencils. I also regretted the choice of my Stillman & Birn Beta book. With hard Polychromos pencils on the tomato, Beta’s tooth was not a problem. With soft Prismacolors, however, I knew I would have to work much longer to cover the paper’s texture to the same degree. Annoyed, I stopped earlier than I would consider finished; I was unhappy with the grisaille anyway.

Grisaille layer 1 (Museum Aquarelle)

Grisaille layer 2

4/10/21 Museum Aquarelle, Prismacolor pencils in S&B Beta sketchbook

Neither of these sketches thrilled me in either process or result, but they got me thinking. Why make the grisaille application process more challenging for myself by using a traditional watercolor method that I haven’t practiced much? And yet the grisaille concept is worth pursuing. Stay tuned for Part 2.

Dibble Intersection (Plus Paper and Pinks)

 

4/8/21 Dibble NW, Crown Hill neighborhood

Dibble Avenue Northwest in Crown Hill is a regular stop on my annual petal-peeping tour. Narrower and tightly packed with parked cars on both sides, the street is a bit more challenging to sketch from my mobile studio than other favorite spots. I would prefer to stand on the sidewalk, but they are narrow too, so I didn’t feel comfortable taking up pedestrian space.

As luck would have it, I found a parking spot on the “wrong” side of the street facing this traffic circle at the foot of the block lined with cherry trees. Almost as much as the cherries, the small, crooked bush caught my eye. Surrounded by daffodils, backlit by the early afternoon sun, it was a beacon of spring cheerfulness. (I sketched the same intersection from the sidewalk in 2016. That sketch was made on March 17, a full three weeks earlier in the season than this one, confirming that the cherries were late in blooming this year as I had suspected.)

Legion Stonehenge White paper

Technical notes: I tried a new paper with this sketch: Legion Stonehenge White, which is one of the samples I tried when I reviewed the Legion sample pack for the Well-Appointed Desk. (I bought a 9-by-12-inch pad of it and stitched a few sheets into a signature, just like I used to do when I bound my sketchbooks regularly.) Its weight is 90 pound, so I was concerned about how well it would hold up to my spritzing technique. It buckled, but not intolerably; its 100 percent cotton content probably kept it from buckling even worse (as 98-pound Canson XL mixed media paper does). Even Stillman & Birn Beta, which is 180 pound, curls a bit. I haven’t sketched on the opposite side of this Stonehenge page yet, though, and that’s usually when buckling bothers me, so we’ll see how it is next time.

What really makes this Stonehenge paper distinctive, from my perspective, is its texture. Apparently a favorite of printmakers, the tooth is lighter than typical cold press papers and S&B Beta but heavier than hot press, which makes it a joy to use with colored pencils.

This year's sakura picks.

Which brings me to . . . pink pencils. Every spring, I add a couple of pink watercolor pencils to my bag. To my constant dismay, the Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle collection does not include a cherry blossom pink (the closest is 571, Anthraquinoid Pink, which is coral, not pink). I usually choose the relatively cool Cd’A Supracolor Light Purple (091) and then add a second pink to scramble with it (“scrambling” is a technical term referring to the use of two pencil colors together without blending them; yes, I just made that up). This year my second color is a vintage Sanford Prismacolor watercolor pencil in Pink (WC2929), which is slightly warmer than the Supracolor.

(Geek note: This natural-barrel Sanford is probably younger than the vintage set with colored barrels shown in my review. But this pink one was still made in the USA, so it was probably from the end of Sanford’s era. Contemporary Prismacolor watercolor pencils still have natural barrels like this, but they are no longer USA-made nor Sanford-branded.)

Hope and Heartbreak

 

My week began with hope and jubilance: Receiving my first jab symbolized the beginning of the end of a virus that has taken so many. Science wins, patience and good sense win, and those of us who have survived all win against a formidable foe.

The next day I received the news: After five months of fighting COVID-19, Toni had passed away of pneumonia. Just when we all thought she had turned the corner toward recovery, our hearts were broken.

There are no winners after all.

This week I focused mostly on giving my right hand a workout with a brush. Initially I had thought that a brush, which requires more control than a pencil or other dry materials, would be even more challenging for my nondominant hand. But it’s challenging with either hand, so my right is not disadvantaged by much. In fact, the brush requires less pressure than dry materials, so my right did about as well as the left. Even after a six-month break, my right hand apparently remembered how to ride a bike.

I received my first Pfizer dose on Day 386.

I think I’ll change it up again for the remainder of the series, which will end on Day 407 when I receive my second Pfizer dose.

Petal Peeping at its Peak

 

4//6/21 Sunset Hill neighborhood

My favorite petal-peeping neighborhood is Sunset Hill. The aged, ornamental cherries not only have spectacularly pink blossoms in spring; they also have trunks and roots with so much character that I drew them in my graphite class. My annual petal-peeping tour would not be complete without a stop there.

A few days ago they were at peak. I knew I had sketched the same tree and resident car a year ago (exactly to the day, in fact) – and three years ago, too! Although there are other places to park, this composition seems to call to me.

The Many Moods of Shawna

 

4/3/21 Shawna, bullfighter, 30-sec. poses

Shawna was at it again – this time as a bullfighter, pixie, carpenter, petting zoo visitor, cook and bowler – and all while dressed in a bikini! I wasn’t feeling my usual groove this time, but Shawna’s imaginative poses are always fun to sketch.

Bullfighter, 30-sec. poses

Pixie, 1-min. poses

Pixie, 1-min. poses

Pixie, 1-min. poses

Carpenter, 2-min. poses

Carpenter, 2-min. poses

Cook, 3-min. poses

At the petting zoo, 5-min. poses

Bowler, 7-min. poses

Spring is in the Air

 

3/23/21 daffodil

I always know spring is in the air when I can’t take a walk without stopping several times to sneeze. It’s a small price to pay, though, to see fresh buds giving trees a haze of pale yellow-green and to smell flowers just beginning to open.

This time last year, the pandemic was fresh, the enormity difficult to grasp, nearly unfathomable. At the height of my anxiety, I found solace in trees continuing to blossom, the birds going about their mating business as if nothing were amiss – as if the whole world hadn’t changed overnight.

A year later, the vaccine has changed everything again, but this time toward hope instead of horror. And the trees and birds still carry on as they always do. I still find solace in that.

4/1/21 plum tree, Maple Leaf neighborhood