Watercolour pencils: draw dry, blend wet

Watercolour pencils look like ordinary coloured pencils, but they behave quite differently once water comes into play: the pigment dissolves and spreads like a glaze. That gives you both worlds in one hand while you're out and about – the control of a pencil and the softness of a layer of paint. In this final lesson we bring together everything you've learned about pressure, layers and complementary shadows, and add water to the mix.

The bridge between pencil and brush

The sequence is always the same: you draw dry, exactly as you're used to, and only afterwards decide which areas to dissolve. So you first hatch an area loosely, then run a damp brush over it – most conveniently with a water brush pen, because then you don't have to balance a jar of water. The hatching turns into a closed area of colour, the stroke marks partly disappear, and the colour suddenly looks deeper and richer.

The beauty of it: you need no palette, no paint box and no mixing in advance. Your colours are already on the paper, the water merely activates them. And you can decide in the middle of a sketch whether to use water at all. If it stays dry, you have a coloured pencil drawing. Dissolve two or three areas and the page immediately gains depth.

Less pigment than you think

The most common beginner's mistake is applying too much colour before the water arrives. Dry, a light hatching looks pale and harmless – wet, it becomes a surprisingly strong area of colour. Expect the colour impression to roughly double when you dissolve it. So work with the same light pressure as in the dry layers and deliberately leave white paper between the strokes. This white gets carried along by the water and creates an even, airy glaze.

If a dissolved area looks too weak to you, let it dry and simply hatch over it again. Going darker is always possible, going lighter almost never.

Four techniques that are enough outdoors

The first: hatch an area and blend it completely. Good for skies, house walls, asphalt – anything where you want a calm, closed surface without stroke directions distracting the eye.

The second: dissolve only the shadow edge. You hatch as usual and run the damp brush only along the darkest part of the shadow. This creates a soft, rich edge, while the area next to it stays dry and streaky. This contrast between blended and hatched is a very effective device and costs you five seconds.

The third: pick colour up straight from the pencil. You wet the brush tip and stroke it across the pencil tip. What you pick up is almost pure pigment – ideal for strong accents such as a dark window, a gap in a door, the shadow under a bench. That's the darkest colour this material can give you, and you only need a few dabs of it.

The fourth: a line over the dried glaze. As soon as the area is really dry, you draw over it again with the pencil – window frames, branches, glazing bars, lettering. The stroke sits crisply on the soft surface and brings back the details the water swallowed.

Order and drying

Think in layers, as with watercolour: from light to dark, from large areas to small details. Dissolved neighbouring areas will bleed into each other if both are damp. If you want a clean edge between roof and sky, dissolve one area first, wait a moment and then turn to the other. Outdoors, paper usually dries in one to two minutes – time in which you can pre-hatch the next area dry. That way you work without pauses and settle into a calm rhythm.

Where it goes wrong

Too much water is the main enemy. If the brush gets too wet, the pigment floats together from all directions and differentiated colours turn into a grey mush. So press the water brush pen only briefly and dab it on a cloth until it's damp rather than dripping. Second point: the paper. Below 200 grams per square metre the sheet buckles immediately, and colour collects in the troughs of the waves in unsightly rings. A sketchbook of 200 to 300 gsm solves this problem completely. And third: not every area has to get wet. The most exciting pages often have only two or three dissolved spots.

Exercise

Find a park bench with a tree behind or beside it, time frame 20 minutes. First draw both completely dry: the tree crown in loosely hatched areas, the bench with clear strokes and shadows in a complementary colour. Then take the damp brush and dissolve only the lower half of the crown, i.e. the part lying in shadow. The upper half, facing the light, stays dry and streaky. Leave the bench entirely dry – only the shadow it casts on the ground may be dissolved with a single stroke. Finally, when everything is dry, draw two or three branches across the blended crown with the pencil.

Key points

Draw dry, then decide where the water goes. Less pigment than you think, because water almost doubles the colour impression. And the appeal lies in the juxtaposition: a blended shadow edge next to dry hatching.