Three cheers for colour! I’m so excited to be bringing my girls to life, first with the shading and now moving on to shading with color, but I’m finding it a little more difficult than I was expecting. I started off using some “Caran D’Ache neocolor II Aquarelle” watercolor crayons that I’ve had kicking around for years. I can’t even remember where or from whom I got them. I shaved & shaved with a box cutter , but had a really tough time getting them to a sharp enough point so I could do any small detail work. The big white crayon was great for blending though, as was the blender pencil that came in a sketching kit my stepson got a few months ago. Yay for finding art supplies around the house! Cuz my budget is tight with a capital T this month. This is my first try on paper:

After adding a bit of water, seeing the page get wavy, then seeing my black pencil lines get smudgier & smudgier (especially into the white of the eyes, which never fully recovered) I was starting to get frustrated. I tried to go over all of my lines with an ultrafine point black Sharpie. This worked well in spots, then got caked with wax & would stop working. Wipe it off…scribble scribble…try again. SLOW GOING. It worked out in the end, but I had to really scrape hard and when you’re working on paper? Just not a good idea.

I was convinced I needed to get the real watercolor pencils, plus some good non-watercolor pencil crayons & picked those up today. I went for a walk with the boys and they wanted to pop into the comic book store. Since I had the dogs with me, I had to wait outside and what did I see 3 doors down? That I’d somehow never noticed before only a few blocks away from my house? A little art supply shop! I love supporting independent businesses and the owner was a sweetheart. They welcomed me inside (yes, even the dogs!), then charged me only $1 for a couple of pencils, a little more for the rest ($1.50?). I’ll definitely be going back there when I’m in a pinch.

Can’t wait to do some more practice sketches on paper and then – on wood!