World Watercolor Month is Done

Unfortunately I didn't get to participate as much as I'd like to have this year in #World Watercolor Month. But I'm happy to have gotten one last drawing in before it was over yesterday. I've been working on this page (i.e.. I sketched it out and promptly forgot about it) for a whole month. I wanted to show the colors of my new Derwent Tinted Charcoal Pencil set but then got busy on a bunch of other things. You know how that goes.

I was also a little nervous to try them out. I've never used charcoal but I knew that I already really liked Derwent's Graphitint pencils which are pencil lead mixed with a bit of color. I figured it would be something fun and new to try. I do love playing with shading, it makes me blissfully happy building up a subject and seeing it come together.

With this piece I used my watercolors to paint the actual pencils then I used the tinted charcoal to start the hand & pencil. I mixed the charcoal with some Graphitint then used an actual 3B pencil to darken the deep shading places. I would have used the charcoal but it's very dusty and getting into the smallest places is more difficult. Besides, I like to be able to say I'm a watercolor AND mixed media artist. ;o) Anyway, I did the nails using my watercolor pencils, what a weird color to try and mix! It's Nina Ultra Pro Pearly Brights, really though it's like ATOMIC Orange-Peach, lol.

I decided to not add drop shadows as I thought the piece was getting too busy. On the other (verso) side of the paper was all the other twelve colors that came in the tin and the whole spread was starting to look too "full".  I'm now in love with these tinted charcoals. Yes, you totally have to spray it with a fixative as it smudges notoriously badly. I couldn't shut my sketchbook until this morning after spraying the pages several times.

Sometime soon my "Guest Artist" post will be up on DoodleWash  and I will definitely announce when it goes live, so as Rachel Maddow would say... "Watch This Space".

Finally, I'm adding a new section to my blog posts. Thanks to Sandra Busby for sharing her idea. Below every blogpost I'll be telling you what I'm up to lately. Kind of a quick sketch in words about me in the last few weeks. Hope you like the addition. :o)

What I've Been Up to:

Learning: Started Urban Sketching course in Sketchbook Skool
Watching: Rachel Maddow, The Trump White House is like watching a Soap Opera!
Eating: Tried jicama for the first time, kinda interesting.
Reading: Emma In The Night, incredible 5+ star book, teaches you about Narcissists. (See White House above, lol)
Planning: I want to make a Zine, now I gotta learn all about them!
Dreaming: About going to the Urban Sketchers Symposium 2018, held in Porto Portugal.
Lurking: Have you seen Sandra Busby's latest video? What about Nicola McLean's new art? OMG, both jaw droopingly amazing.
Best,

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