RE: Splinterlands Art Contest! // Week 103, Title: "NYAI BLORONG"
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Wow, this is some nice artwork! I also enjoyed the Java backstory.
Have you ever tried to blend the Polychromos with baby oil and Q-Tips? This gives another unique effect. I also use rubbing alcohol (isopropanol) for blending, that's less greasy, but obviously not as safe with a young child around.
Also, you might like to try the Albrecht Dürer line by Faber-Castell. They're softer than the Polychromos and they can be blended with water (Pentel Aquash water brush) to a watercolor appearance. Both lines of pencils are complimentary to each other and unfortunately equally expensive - but worth it.
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Exactly that was the point... They are both quite costly 😂. That's why I was in a dilemma when I wanted to spend the money for this hobby LOL.
I didn't have a big budget for both as I am an amateur artist anyway, so I needed to choose.
I finally took Polychromos because I initially loved to play with oil colours but needed to set that aside since I was pregnant.
I might want to play with it again later on.
But I take a note on your tips. Probably I'd also buy Albrecht Dürer sets someday.
It's been a while that I didn't draw nor paint.
My child is now big enough to busy herself for a while and she went to KiTa too, so I have a bit more time now for hobby 😁.
Btw I only used layering tricks, paper stump and the white colour to blend, but it is still not so satisfying anyhow. Perhaps I am just still not skillful enough doing it.
I have thought of using baby oil previously but worried that it would be greasy and I'd end up messing up this drawing.
Should I better use cotton buds or brush if I use baby oil?
Thank you for the tips 😊.
Q-Tips work best for blending with oil. The oil will permeate the paper but dry in time. A soft, satiny feel remains. I prefer alcohol because it dries faster. Odorless paint thinner also works well, but the latter two smell like the chemicals they are.
Polychromos are actually pretty hard and don't blend all that well with a stump. It's important to lay them down with a soft, gentle touch, or the pigments will compact and can't be moved around anymore.
The Dürers are more versatile in many ways, but they don't hold a point as long because they're soft. So I use both.
A cheaper alternative at a comparable quality are Koh-I-Noor Mondeluz - 72 watercolor pencils about 50 EUR online. Boesner sells them open stock, but not in SB, only in Perl and online.
Koh-I-Noor also makes Polycolor pencils which are very comparable to Polychromos, only cheaper. Koh-I-Noor is a Czech company with over 200 years of tradition. They make great stuff.
Indeed,paper stump didn't help much. I would certainly try the baby oil.
I've never thought that combining water-based colours with oil-based ones could work well, so I didn't think of trying.
It seems that I need to be more flexibler.
Now I just got something good to learn again, thank you so much for the tips and recommendations too.
Sometimes I have seen Koh-I-Noor products while browsing about drawing tools, now that you mentioned it, I would check on them too.
If you start putting oil all over your paper you're not going to have much fun with (wet) watercolor pencils afterwards. I use my Polychromos dry over watercolor, for accents and items I don't want to bleed when the paper is rewetted. My blending is done with water. There seems to be very little point the other way around, but perhaps you can invent a new technique, like a new oil masking technique?
I like your art just as it is. "Need" doesn't play into it, but it's fun to experiment and try new things. Some people enjoy that. Others are purists and frown on mixing media. To each their own.
I made a quick comparison about what we touched on for you, the three pencils on highly textured watercolor paper.
(A) Blended with alcohol. As you can see, alcohol works on watercolor pencils, too.
(W) Blended with water directly on the paper ("activating"). You can see that Faber-Castell activates slightly more even than Koh-I-Noor. However, on matte paper the difference is not as noticeable. It's true, you always get what you pay for.
(S) Blended dry with a paper stump.
(G) Activated with gum arabic OFF the paper and brushed on.
The (G)-option is especially interesting. I wrote about this a while back in this post:
https://peakd.com/art/@wulff-media/great-painting-hacks-and-some-urban-sketching
You can get gum arabic at Boesner (SB-Eurobahnhof) for a few Euro - it will last you a lifetime :-)
Happy painting!
You're right, "need" might not be the correct word to say. I meant that I could just be more open to many ideas. Not that I must end up working dominantly with multimedia, cos each person has one's own favorite. But as you said it well:"Trying new things and doing some experiments to see how the output looks should be fun."
That is the special thing being an artist afterall...: to be free doing whatever interesting coming into our mind
Thank you for sharing your knowledge with me. It is great to know you 😊.
Irgendwann komme ich sicher zum Boesner vorbei.