Accompanying colour with me video on YouTube.
I so love Inktense pencils! However, I noticed that a lot of graphite was picked up by the brush and dissolved Inktense when I was adding colour. I had a sudden flash of insight; try using a grey Faber-Castell Pitt Artist brush pen to put in the shadows. So I did.
The Pitt artist brushes have india ink in them; when the ink dries it is waterproof. If I was working on larger areas, I’d use a damp brush to soften the edge of the shadow before the ink dries. That wasn’t an option for me with this small drawing.
As I added Inktense, I could tell the colour was much more vibrant, but the shadows subtly show through. There was such a difference between the latest sections added and the ones in my previous video/post that I went back and added another layer of colour to these areas. That then matched the vibrancy and clarity of colour across the whole coloured area.
I decided to add some jewel-toned blue. Though I’m not sure that was a good idea at this point, it kind of works as it is kind of a complementary colour to all those yellow-orange-red tones! I also added the blue to the green areas, which seemed to make them more vibrant too.
I always find it easier to add colour to more abstract artworks, using a fairly limited palette too. I have started adding colour to the Entangled Botanic drawing in my previous blog post. I’m really not sure about the colours at all. Fortunately, I scanned the drawing in before setting to it with Inktense pencils and waterbrush. I also know that if some of the colours are a bit garish, I can always tone them down with a layer of another colour. I also think I may add some golden texture/dots to the design too.
Today, I spent a rather lovely couple of hours swatching all my Inktense pencils, including the new set of 24 released this year. There are some beautiful colours in that set and they fill in some holes in the original colour palette. I may very well scan my swatch in and use it to create a colour palette in Clip Studio Paint.
The pot I keep all my Inktense in is a tad small for them all, so I’ve splurged on a case that will hold all of the Inktense and my set of Chromaflow pencils (as long as I weed out the duplicate Inktense pencils). Putting them in order in the case will reduce the frustration of not being able to find the pencil I need in the pot they’re in now!
For now, I think I need some tea!
Angela Porter 