I don’t have a lot to share since last time, but I felt in the mood to update the blog, anyway!
Hallowe'en in Summer: Why Not?
I haven’t checked to see when I started doing Halloween-ish doodles, last year. Maybe September? I guess I’m getting an even earlier start in 2025. Whatever it was that sparked the idea of doodling jack-o’-lanterns is to blame. Last blog post, I shared that doodle, but apparently one page wasn’t enough, because I’ve done another.
This time, it started when I was testing some old Crayola color pencils. I’d watched a video of someone talking about and swatching all of their neon or fluorescent media. They had some nice neon pencils, and that reminded me that my old set of Crayolas from my high school days (or maybe even earlier) had four fluoro colors. I doubted they would be as highly pigmented or opaque as the ones demonstrated, but was curious to test how they’d show up over watercolor—or how they might work under the paint, since some waxy color pencils act as a resist for paint.
I tried it both ways:
Pencil 1st (underneath the watercolor) on the left. Pencil 2nd (on top of dried watercolor) on the right. And out of curiosity, I tried fountain pen ink over the pencil to see what would happen. (I forgot to try wiping if off later. That was the test, to see if it would smear.)
I think you’ll agree that the sample on the left was much nicer. The one on the right is dulled by the paint and looks shiny. I was impressed by the results, considering these are just old, relatively cheap Crayola pencils.
After that, I wanted to try using the neon pencils as a resist in a painting, so I drew the first thing that came to mind—that’s right, more jack-o’-lanterns! But this time I decided to incorporate mice into the drawing, as well. I used the Duke 600 fude pen for the sketch.
Next, I scribbled with the neon pencils in a few places on each pumpkin. I didn’t photograph that step, but you’ll see them shining through the watercolor in subsequent photos.
Neon can be tricky to capture accurately (or at least I find that it is), so none of the following may be completely true to reality. (That doesn’t really matter to me, but I thought I’d mention it, anyway.)
In the next picture, I’ve just added some orange, yellow-orange, and pinky-orange watercolors to the pumpkins, followed by a brown mix to the stems. I really like how the neon pencil comes through the paint. This could be fun to try with a more contrasting color of paint, like dark blue or dark green. I’ll have to try that next time, if I remember!
After that, I tinted the leaves of the pumpkins, followed by the mice (after adding tiny bits of hot pink neon pencil to their ears).
Still loving every minute of it!
I wasn’t sure how I wanted to color in the faces of the jack-o’-lanterns. I could have gone back with ink… Could have tried color pencil… But in the end, I went for grey-brown watercolor.
I’m mostly happy with my choice, but one of the jack-o’-lanterns’ features bled a little. (Middle one in the top row, and also the one on the top right, to a lesser extent.) I had thinned the paint down a bit too much, and I guess because it was overly watery, the paper didn’t like it. This sketchbook is getting a bit older, so the sizing may be going bad, which I think I’ve heard can contribute to this kind of thing. Or maybe the previous layer of paint wasn’t completely dry all the way through…
Anyway, it’s just something for fun, so we’ll pretend it was intentionally messy.
All in all, I’d call this a great success! The Crayola neon pencils worked really well as a resist, and they add an interesting touch. I’d happily use this technique again. (And of course right now I feel like I could cheerfully draw jack-o’-lanterns until the cows come home!)
Experiment Time!
I was watching another video—one explaining how mixed media works, which media can layer other which others, etc.—and something mentioned made me want to try watercolor over some of the possibly water-resistant media I have. It’s kind of like the neon color pencil thing from above, but I specifically wanted to try the resist method with white acrylic media.
I’ve probably tried it before. I know I’ve done resists with other things than the neon pencils—specifically Crayola crayons, a clear wax crayon that came in an egg-decorating kit, and light-toned color pencils. However, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever tried it with white acrylic pens and other similar products.
I started by just doodling some trees and other simple shapes on a blank page. It wasn’t the easiest to see what I was drawing. Putting the light on an angle helped, though.
Here’s what I used:
- Artistro white paint pen (marked “extra fine tip”)
- Dr. Ph. Martin’s Pen-White ink (applied with dip pen)
- “amak” brand white paint pen (0.7mm tip)
- “Acrylic Paint Pen for Arts & Crafts”
- BETEM dual-tipped acrylic marker (fine nib)
- BETEM dual-tipped acrylic marker (dot nib)
Basically, just any acrylic-based (or what I thought would be acrylic) pen or ink in white.
Another, closer view of part of the page:
After they’d dried (which I assisted with a heat tool), I put a series of quick and messy washes of watercolor over them.
This is how the page looked, dry:
As you can see, most of the white acrylic took on at least some of the color of the paint. There’s not a lot of contrast, with most of them. (Come to think of it, I never tried wiping it off after it dried, but I don’t think it would have made much difference.)
Because I could see that the paint was tinting the white dots heavily, I used the end of a paintbrush to score lines for texture. I’ve seen people do this in videos before, but hadn’t really tried it much myself. If you do it while the paint is still fresh and wet, it pools in the lines to darken them.
One thing I wasn’t expecting was that the Dr. Ph. Martin’s Pen-White would pick up with the paintbrush when I applied the watercolor, but it definitely did. I could see streaks of white mixing into the paint on the palette when I went back to reload the brush. I need to check into that…
…Reading more about it, now, I see that it’s not marketed as water-resistant. That explains it! I was mostly planning on using in on top of dried paint, so it should be fine for that, and if you’re just applying a little paint on top, it might still work. It’s just not going to stay 100% strong and steady.
So, since the white didn’t stay boldly white on most of the page, I went back over it with a variety of other things to pick out the trees again—or just to add interest. I used fountain pen, black rollerball pen, more of the white acrylic pen, and both silver and gold metallic color pencils. I tend not to use metallic color pencils (or paint) that often. It doesn’t photograph well, for one thing. Also, I think I assume that metallic color pencil won’t have much shine, but these weren’t bad. I might try using them more, primarily for things that will be given to someone—like accents on cards, and especially on Christmas cards or gift tags.
This experiment wasn’t as successful, but it’s still good to know, and it’s given me more ideas of things to try. For instance, would a brighter/darker acrylic pen stand out better against a light watercolor wash? How would this work with white color pencil? Oil pastel?
Lots of things to try!
Actually, I went ahead and did one more quick sample test: Tevilik outline markers with watercolor on top. These markers make a bright silver acrylic (I assume) outlined thinly in another color. I guess this one is grey:
And here it is with paint on top:
It didn’t seem to budge at all. For silver marks, this would work really well.
I need to make notes of the things to try next. Having something written down makes a big difference. I’m excited to try these “experiments”, but if they aren’t written down, I’ll probably just forget them! Maybe next time I’ll have a few more variations to share.
