I have been having so much fun getting to know the new Spectrum AquaBlend watercolour pencils which I ordered at launch. These are highly pigmented water colour pencils with a nice thick core. I have other watercolour pencils from both Derwent and Faber-Castell so I wasn’t 100% sure if I really needed these ones. However the main draw for me was the large colour palette of bright colours. Of the complete 94 colours there are plenty of ready prepared colours spread out across the spectrum of colours. It is also easy to navigate and purchase the sets as there are no duplicates and the tins have meaningful names. For instance – the essentials contain all your skin tones and shading colours, whereas the florals have a vast amount of pinks, reds and yellows.
Once I opened them up the first thing I did was scribble out a colour chart for all the colours and reference which tin that pencil came from. The first thing I noticed was how smooth the pencils are. I am not an expect at pencil formulas but there appears to be no grit or graininess which is amazing! The next thing I noticed was that the colours don’t fade when the colours dry so they remain as bright as you colour them. Apparently these pencils are lightfast for 50 – 100 years!
Then I went ahead and stamped out some stamps by Sheena Douglass onto watercolour card. I stamped using my black Archival ink by Ranger. This is one of the Little Bit Magical stamps. To get the shading I picked three tones of each colour to create a blend just as I would with my alcohol pens, coloured the pencils onto the card roughly and then used a paintbrush and clean water to make the magic happen. Sheena designs her stamps to include indications on where the shading should go. For smaller details such as her lips I also wet my brush and took pigment directly from the pencil and painted on.
Next up I coloured in Sheena’s mermaid stamp from the same range. I then created a very simple background of sky and sea which was very easy to do.
And for my next trick! I stamped a very detailed stamp of Sheena’s called Laguna Surf and referring to my colour chart picked and chose colours as I fancied!
And guess what? Since opening the tins I have NOT sharpened a single pencil yet!!! Bargain!!!
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