Use watercolor pencils for a color drawing, before painting with acrylic paint

Watercolor pencils work great for making a base drawing, for when you want to paint it in with acrylics and/or watercolors. A big plus is that you can now have your base drawing be in color, making the drawing so much easier to paint in. This comes in especially handy when making a rather large and/or intricate drawing.

The watercolor pencil markings will blend right in with the acrylic and watercolor paint. Any exposed watercolor pencils markings, can be wiped off with a damp paper towel after the paint has dried (when painting on a canvas or such surface with acrylic paint,) giving your painting a nice clean and blended look when finished. No more dark pencil marks showing through or smearing in with the paint!

I've used black drawing pencils before, and it had blended in the dark of the pencil with the acrylic paint, which I then had to go back over again and touch up. Using the watercolor pencils alleviated that extra step.

If you're looking for a watercolor pencil with a good grip, I recommend The Ergosoft watercolor pencils, by Staedtler; this link goes to Amazon. These watercolor pencils have a thin rubber type coating on the outer layer of the pencil. The body of these pencils have a rounded triangular shape, which I also find pretty comfortable to hold.

I just use a regular sized pencil sharpener to sharpen them.

Cheryl Paton