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Steps written out by Crafting Step by Step from In the Studio with Michele Webber's video (opens YouTube) (16:16). Published .
Watercolor pencils confuse people because they look like colouring pencils and behave like paint. Shade with one and nothing much happens. Touch it with a wet brush and the colour dissolves and floods.
Michele Webber runs through the core techniques here on a single grid of test boxes, which is the sensible way to learn them - draw yourself the same grid and work down it rather than trying any of this on a painting you care about.
A regular coloured pencil is held together with wax or oil, so water beads off it. A watercolor pencil uses a water-soluble binder, which is why it melts under a brush. Pans are the same pigment in a cake. They cover a big sky faster. Pencils win on control and on travel: a few pencils and a waterbrush fit in a coat pocket.
Not enough water. Almost every disappointing wash is a pencil mark that never fully dissolved, so it sits there as a visible line under the colour. The answer is usually more water and a bigger brush, not more pigment.
Use watercolour paper, 140 lb (300 gsm) cold pressed. Printer paper is so thin that the fibres swell as soon as they get wet. It buckles into waves, then pills when you brush it again. Mixed-media paper copes with light washes. A sketchbook with thin pages will ripple.
A waterbrush pen holds water in the barrel. Squeeze gently and the tip stays damp, with no jar to knock over. It suits small areas and sketching on the go. For anything bigger, use a round size 6 or 8 dipped in water and blotted once on kitchen paper. You want the brush wet, not dripping.
| Wet-on-dry | Dry-on-wet | |
|---|---|---|
| What you do | Shade dry paper, then brush water over it | Wet the paper, then draw into it |
| What you get | Controlled washes, crisp edges | Soft, feathered lines that bloom |
| Use it for | Shapes, skies, layering | Backgrounds, flowers, texture |
You need fewer pencils than you think. Yellow over blue gives a green you will not find in any tin. Stop at three layers or the paper starts to give up.
To lift, blot a damp area with kitchen paper or a clean, thirsty brush. On a dry area, wet it, scrub lightly and blot. Staining colours will not fully come back.
For a December gift, a set of 24 is plenty. Look for soft leads that dissolve fully, lightfastness ratings on the tin, and a set that includes a waterbrush. Add a small pad of 140 lb watercolour paper. Most beginners get stuck because of the paper, not the pencils.
Want something to paint next? Try drawing flowers and washing them with pencil, or borrow the soft edges from painting clouds and painting a flower. Alcohol ink is the next fluid medium to try.
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Twelve watercolor pencil techniques: flat colour, graduated washes, blending edges, layering to mix colours, drawing on wet paper and more. An easy project: about 45 minutes, plus 20 minutes to dry or set. Materials cost about $6 to $12. You need 8 things, including Watercolour paper, cold pressed, Kitchen paper for blotting and Watercolor pencils. The 12 steps start with turn the Pencil into Paint on a Palette, no Palette? Use a Scrap of Paper and shade Lightly for Flat Colour.
12 steps, about 16 minutes. Tap a picture to jump to that step. Your progress saves automatically.
Tick each step off as you go.
Scribble the pencil hard into a palette well until you have a small pile of loose pigment. Wet a brush, lift the colour off, and paint with it.
You now have a pan of watercolour paint that happens to live in a pencil. It is the fastest way to get strong, even colour without dragging a pencil across the paper at all.
A spare piece of textured watercolour paper does the same job. Scrub the pencil onto it, then lift the pigment with a wet brush.
The paper drinks a little of the colour so you get slightly less off it than you would from a palette well. For something already on your desk, that is a fair trade.
For an even block of colour, shade gently and evenly across the whole shape first.
Resist bearing down. A hard pencil dents the paper, pigment settles into the dent, and it dries as a dark line you cannot lift out later.
Keep the pencil tip blunt rather than sharp. A sharp point digs in exactly where you do not want it to.
Bring a wet brush across the shading in a single consistent direction rather than scrubbing back and forth. One clean pass pulls the pigment into an even wash.
Scrubbing lifts colour off the paper as fast as it spreads it, which is how you end up with a patchy middle.
Anything larger than a thumbnail wants a flat brush. It carries far more water than a round one, and running dry halfway across a square is what leaves a streak down the middle.
On a large painting, sweep straight off the edge of the paper rather than stopping short.
For a sky that fades out, shade the colour along the top only. Wash it downward, then rinse the brush, come up from the bottom with clean water, and meet in the middle.
Without that clean-water pass from below, the colour keeps creeping all the way down and you lose the gradient entirely.
Blot the brush on kitchen paper between passes. A dripping brush leaves puddles, and puddles dry as hard edges.
Sometimes you only want one edge to disappear. Shade the shape, then brush outward from that edge into clean water and keep going until the colour runs out.
Work slightly outside the pencil outline. Trying to stay perfectly inside it gives you a hard rim, which is the opposite of what you are after.
A small tin goes much further than you would expect, because watercolor pencils mix on the paper rather than in a palette. Lay one colour over another and you have made a third.
Shade a warm yellow into one corner and a blue in from the other, letting them overlap along a diagonal. Wet the join and a citrus green appears where the two meet.
It is a livelier green than anything premixed, and you can push it warmer or cooler just by adding more of one pencil.
Give a layer time to dry before you work over it. Go back in too soon and the wet brush lifts the colour underneath, so instead of two clean layers you get one muddy one.
Impatient? A hairdryer on a low setting is fine, held well back so it does not blow the wash around.
Wet the paper first with clean water, then draw into the damp surface with the pencil tip. The marks bloom and feather out on their own.
You get soft, spreading lines that you simply cannot make on dry paper, and every one comes out slightly different.
Hold a blade against the pencil tip and scrape a few shavings onto a wash while it is still wet. Each fleck bursts where it lands.
It is a quick way to suggest foliage, grit or distant texture, and because you cannot control exactly where the specks fall it never looks laboured.
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How to Use Watercolor Pencils
Liquitex
Liquitex BASICS Acrylic Paint Set (24 tubes)
Artist-grade pigment at student pricing, buttery enough to blend and thick enough to hold a stroke. The set most acrylic painters start on.
Benicci
Benicci 16-Piece Artist Brush Set
Every shape you actually reach for (round, flat, filbert, liner, fan) in nylon that keeps its point and does not shed. Comes with a palette knife and case.
FIXSMITH
FIXSMITH 8" x 10" Stretched Canvas (12-pack)
Pre-primed cotton canvases in a bulk pack so you can just start painting. The low-stakes surface for practicing before the big piece.
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Question 1 of 5
What causes most disappointing watercolor pencil washes?
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5 questions, answers, and one-line explanations. Tap to expand.
1.What causes most disappointing watercolor pencil washes?
Answer: Not enough water on the brush
An undissolved pencil mark sits under the colour as a visible line.
2.Why shade lightly rather than pressing hard?
Answer: Pigment settles in the dent and will not lift
A hard pencil dents the paper and the pigment in that dent dries as a dark line.
3.How should you move the brush across the shading?
Answer: One consistent pass in a single direction
Scrubbing lifts colour off as fast as it spreads it, so one clean pass wins.
4.How do you stop a graduated wash creeping too far down?
Answer: Come up from the bottom with clean water
A clean-water pass from below meets the colour in the middle and holds it there.
5.What happens when you draw onto paper that is already wet?
Answer: The marks bloom and feather on their own
Damp paper makes the marks spread into soft lines you cannot get on dry paper.
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