Friday 13 September 2019

All of Derwent’s White Pencils

  Debbie often pulls out bits and bobs from her cupboard at the studio… Little trinkets… Inks.. Pens… Coloured markers… It keeps things interesting and keeps the ideas flowing for us at the studio.

  A while back, she took out these wooden cabochons that we then glued to blank tiles. I tried to make mine into a cartouches.

  And here’s a postcard-sized tile that I did just for fun. Gemstones are a great way to jazz up your art.

  A gemstone also sneaked into one of the tiles I did during Tea & Tangle session. Debbie was very ambitious- we had three “tangle of the day”. They were “Trinity”, “Ratoon”, and “Drawings”. Here are the tiles I created. (The tinting of the tiles was done in advance.)

  We've been adding small canvases to the studio recently. Debbie painted some of them, and we found an accidental art on her plastic palette after. 

Pretty!

  Inspired by Debbie’s post on which white shading tool is best for black paper, I decided to make my own discoveries on which Derwent pencil was best for black paper.

  I had six contenders…. The Tinted Charcoal, Coloursoft coloured pencil, Graphitint, Inktense, Lightfast coloured pencil, and Pastel pencil. Of the six options, the Graphitint and Inktense are water-soluble.

  I tested them without smudging, with smudging, and with water added (when applicable).


This was a black card from a scrapbook that Debbie bought from Daiso.

  The results were that the Pastel pencil produced the brightest white, but it also created the most amount of fallout. The Lightfast coloured pencil laid down really smoothly- kind of like butter. I like the Inktense when wet, but it’s difficult to control the consistency of coverage once you add water…

  The Graphitint is lovely, without creating nearly as much dust as the Pastel pencil. So it has become my tool to use for black tiles.

  Debbie gave me tiles from Alicia G. Rey, Zen Pig, and Strathmore to try, too. My tests on those tiles produced similar results to the one on the Daiso card.

Alicia G.Rey's tile.

Zen Pig

Strathmore

If you live in Singapore (or are visiting) you can buy Derwent products from Art Friend.

It’s fun playing around with new materials and figuring out what works best for you. What new and interesting art materials have you played with recently? Let me know in the comments.

1 comment:

  1. Great post Stephanie. And thanks for road-testing those pencils. I might have to get myself a white Graphitint.

    I've already admired it elsewhere - but your square Ratoon tile is divine - the colours are a bit murkier than usual for you, which really appeals to my tastes! ;)

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