BRING OUT YOUR CREATIVITY
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Gallery
  • Blog
  • Store
  • Contact
  • Resume
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Service
  • Let Me Make Some Art For You
  • Youtube
  • Email Sign Up

Painting A Tree Frog In General's and 'Caran Dache Watercolor Pencils

12/9/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture

​These are swatches I made of my General's Kimberly Watercolor Pencils and my watercolor pencils from Caran 'Dache . The first pic shows the swatches dry and the second one shows them with water added.

I was expecting to like the Caran d'ache pencils way more than the Kimberly ones, but aside from the colors of Caran d'ache being more vibrant, there's not a lot of difference that I could see in quality. By that I mean, I think the Kimberly watercolor pencils are still great to work with.
That's just what I learned from swatching, though. To get a real idea of how well both sets of pencils worked, I needed to do two full projects with them, so I decided to paint this frog from Pixabay in twice, using the General's Pencils for one and the Caran 'Dache pencils for the other.
Picture

Below is day one of the General's version.
Picture

Maybe i just didn't use enough water or enough pencil, but I found it kind of difficult to build the green up to the intensity that I wanted it. What you see there is probably about three or four layers and I'm still not quite happy with it. As I'm writing this, I'm considering painting some red on the sides for shadows. In layering yellow with purple for the flesh around his eyeball and red with orange for his feet, I found that these pencils make it easy to blend and mix colors.
Picture
 For the ridges in the leaf, I used the tip of my light green pencil and blended with my smallest watercolor filbert brush in a vertical motion. I moved my brush slowly in a continuous motion down the pencil line.

I added a red shadow to the side of the frog's body. The idea behind this is that since red and green are compliments, the presence of the red should make the green of the frog's body look brighter. I'm not sure how well that worked out, though. Then again, maybe I just need more layers on the frog. 

I combined my light green and my regular green pencils for the mountains, since it looked like no single pencil was going to cut it.
That's pretty much it for the General's version of this painting. Now for the Caran 'Dache pencils.
Picture
I quickly found that the Caran 'Dache pencils blended out way more easily than the General's. My blending frustration might also be due to the paper that I'm using, though. I'm working on rough paper, so the pencil has a lot of nooks and crannies to get caught in. Cold press or even hot press be a better choice for working in watercolor in pencil form.
Picture
When it came to his left eye, I decided I would paint a ring of red around it, leaving some of the orange showing in the middle. Then I took a what looked to me like a bluish green pencil and draw a thin shadow, right along the outer edge. When I blended this all out with water, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the shadow blended into the rest of the eye.

I took advantage of the extra colors in this set to paint some dark spots on the frog's back.

​I started filling in the mountains in the background with a dark green pencil. Then I decided it needed to be more yellow, so, I layered a yellow pencil with it.
Picture
Picture
I was thinking the mountains and the leaf looked too similar in color, so I set to work adding more yellow to the mountains. I also used purple, just so the yellow wouldn't be too bright. It took several layers of yellow and purple to get the mountains where they are now and I pressed pretty hard with the yellow.

The harder you press with a watercolor pencil, the more of that pigment you'll get. So if you want, for example, a yellowish green, press really hard with your yellow and press lightly with your blue. That's how I painted the ridges flanking the strip on the edge of the leaf.

In the second photo, I've started to color in the sky and I've also shaded the ridges in the leaf a darker shade, leaving a strip of the original shade showing on the edge for a highlight.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

      Never Miss A Post

    Subscribe to Newsletter

    Sara Millett

    Painter of portraits and wildlife

    Archives

    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016

    Categories

    All
    Acrylic Floral Paintings
    Acrylic Nature Paintings
    Acrylic Painting
    Acrylic Paintings
    Acrylic Painting Video Tutorials
    Acrylic Portrait Paintings
    Acrylic Portraits
    Advice About Art Supplies
    Advice For Beginning Artists
    Animal Drawing
    Animal Paintings
    Art
    Art Advice
    Art Discussions
    Art Thoughts
    Art Tips
    Avoiding Blooms In Watercolor Painting
    Avoiding Plagiarism In Art
    Being An Artist
    Colored Pencil
    Color Mixing
    Color Mixing Exercise
    Creative Process
    Creativity
    Drawing Tips
    Glazing(technique)
    Graphite Drawing
    Hair In Watercolor
    Improving As An Artist
    Inspiration
    Issues With Watercolor
    Lightfastness
    New Ways To Mix Skin Tone
    Originality In Art
    Painting A Deer In Watercolor
    Painting Advice
    Painting Animals In Acrylics
    Painting Backgrounds
    Painting Experiments
    Painting Human Features In Acrylics
    Paintings
    Paintings Done On Ampersand Boards
    Painting Skin Tone
    Paintings Of Animals
    Paintings Of Birds
    Painting Tips
    Portrait Drawing
    Portrait Painting
    Portrait Painting In Watercolor
    Portrait Painting Tips
    Portraits
    Portrait Tips
    Product Reviews
    Thoughts On Productivity
    Tips For Painting Fur
    Use Of Underpainting
    Videos
    Watercolor Painting
    Watercolor Paintings
    Watercolor Painting Tips
    Watercolor Portrait Painting
    Watercolor Portraits
    Watercolor Techniques
    Watercolor Wildlife Painting
    Wildlife Art
    Wildlife Drawing
    Wildlife Painting
    Wildlife Painting In Acrylics
    Wildlife Paintings
    Youtube

Privacy Policy​
Terms Of Service​
Contact​
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Gallery
  • Blog
  • Store
  • Contact
  • Resume
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Service
  • Let Me Make Some Art For You
  • Youtube
  • Email Sign Up