I finally got around to trying out my new watercolour pens that I got for Christmas. For this sketch I worked from a photo from a recent drive through Jasper because it was really cold today and I was just hunkered down in the living room to paint. It might just have to be a photo reference week while I play with these pens.

I am really loving how super pigmented these watercolour pens are. That is one thing I am always a little unhappy with when I am using watercolour–the paintings might be nice and bright when I am painting, but they always dry a bit paler. I guess the fix for that would be to build up the painting in layers…OR, I could just use these watercolour pens! Look at that blue!

These are really fun to use too–I just started playing with them and finished this sketch before I thought to look up how to use them, but I more or less used them correctly. There doesn’t seem to be a wrong way to use them–you can use them directly on the paper and then add water to the stokes with a brush, you can add a water wash to the paper and then “paint” with the pens in the water, or you can dip the pens straight into the water and then draw with them.

So I am pretty excited to do some more sketching with them and I am aiming to get back into doing one blog post a week. I have taken far too much time off.