The year has been busier than I expected, so... no posts for 3 months. What a pity. I really haven't had the time to sketch or paint, though I have taken some photos. Still, it's better to post even if it's a bit late...
I love to buy art supplies. Who doesn't? Well, on a recent trip to Evanston, IL, I stopped in at the local Dick Blick store. Several (can't say) dollars later, I walked out with cute magnets, page markers, watercolor paper, new WC paints (including some brands I hadn't tried before like Fragonard and Van Gogh) and some Inktense WC pencils. Aaaargh! What will I do with all of these??
I'd bought WC pencils in the past, but had heard such good things about Inktense that I couldn't resist, so I bought a few (=12, okay?) that I carefully chose from the WONDERFUL selection that Blick had.
I thought it would be helpful to compare the Inktense with other WC media, so I set up a still life, marked my paper off into 4 sections, and began! What did I use? Top right, Inktense; top left, Faber-Castell WC pencils; bottom left, Sargent WC crayons; bottom right, WC tube paints. (And that's the order in which I painted them.) At first I didn't see any real difference between the Inktense and the other WC pencils, but I can see now that the Inktense pencils are much richer and deeper. I'm not so keen on the WC crayons and will probably not use them that often. I might need to work further with the regular WC crayons as well. Never having used Inktense before, I didn't know how hard to press... so perhaps the darkness is due to my having used a LOT of pencil!
Now I know that I need to buy a book on using WC pencils. I washed each object with a brush but I'm sure that there are techniques where you let the pencil marks show. I'll get there. I quite like the pencils and might use them when I'm out and about tomorrow for SketchCrawl. Wish me luck.
Did I mention that I also bought 2 new brushes? Yup, #10 and #12 Robert Simmons White Sable brushes. They are great... wonderful point, and they carry an incredible amount of water. I highly recommend them.
