Pens, Pencils & Erasers

These go-to tools are the unsung heroes of the watercolor process! My art compositions begin their process of becoming with my pencil, sketch pad, and an eraser. Every beautiful watercolor piece you see began as a sketched pencil idea, worked out and perfected before paint ever touched the palette. In this book, you will use your pencils to trace the project worksheets (or sketch freehand if you prefer), eraser to remove pencil lines from your finished piece, and pens to add fine ink work to your paintings for visual interest and dimension.

Micron Pens

Incorporating some ink with your watercolor paint can give your pieces a modern crispness. For these details, I like to use Micron pens. These pens create a thin, consistent, waterproof line that doesn’t run or bleed when you paint over it. I often ink my lines before I add paint, so a waterproof Micron pen has become an essential part of my creative process.

Combining ink and watercolor mediums has become one of my most recognizable styles on social media. It’s a great way to combine the precision and detail of drawing with the flowing freedom of watercolor paint. You’ll practice doing this in Lessons 12, 13, and 15.

We also use ink in some lessons (such as Lesson 12, page 142) to create our boundary before painting, then bringing our paintbrush up to the edge of the ink to fill in the boundary.

Pencils & Colored Pencils

I keep HB pencils on hand at all times. “HB” refers to the lead consistency, and just means that the lead is soft and easy to erase. Any #2 pencil works in a similar way. Because I use pencils for sketching and conceptualizing ideas, I like the lead to be easy to remove, should I want to adjust lines.

Once I’ve sketched a new piece with my HB pencil, I usually use a water-soluble colored pencil to create the lines on my watercolor paper. HB pencil lines erase easily on sketchbook paper, but they do not erase once paint is added over them! If you’re painting a piece in dark paint lines, like Payne’s Gray, subtle HB pencil lines won’t show up after you’ve painted over them. However, when you paint with light colors, and if subtle pencil lines showing up in your final piece bother you, you may want to opt to use water-soluble colored pencils, also called watercolor pencils, on your final surface. They allow you to draw illustrative guiding lines on watercolor paper, but the lines then dissolve when you paint over them. I like to select a light watercolor pencil (usually in a blush tone) and a dark watercolor pencil (usually in a gray tone) to use as my guiding lines. Since they dissolve into the watercolor paint, the color doesn’t have to be perfectly matched.

Erasers

If you make a mistake with acrylic and oil painting, you can simply layer on another coat of paint and voila—the mistake is covered. But given its translucency, watercolor painting doesn’t work that way; applying another layer will not fully cover the out-of-place mark. Luckily, you have some tools at your disposal to help clean up mistakes.

I consider paper towels the watercolorist’s eraser and always keep them within arm’s reach while I’m painting. If you need to make changes to a piece, such as cleaning up an edge without disturbing the surrounding paints, a paper towel and a bit of water go a long way. You’ll practice using paper towels as an eraser and blotting tool throughout the lessons in the book.

Another tool I regularly use is the Sakura Koi Colorless Blender, a clear brush pen. Its intended use is to blend watercolor colors together smoothly, but I’ve found that using it as an eraser is extremely effective. To do so, wet the point of the blender in clean water and gently stroke a stubborn, out-of-place splatter; this usually removes the offending mark without pulling up the texture of the paper. Unexpected red pigment splatters on your clean white watercolor paper are generally the hardest to remove, but the Sakura Koi blender can even erase these! You don’t specifically need this tool for the lessons, but it is handy to have.

And, of course, I also use an Artgum Eraser for all of my sketching, before I ever paint. Artgum Erasers are designed to absorb graphite, so they are a wonderful tool to have as you trace and sketch in pencil. These can also pick up some colored pencil lines.