Friday, April 30, 2010

Crayola Watercolor Pencils Review

Since I got a couple class packs for upcoming Family Art Night activities, decided to do a quick review of the Crayola watercolor pencils. While I have not found any local brick-and-mortar retailer that carries them, they are fairly easy to find online. They are a good introduction to the advantages and range of techniques possible with watercolor pencils with a minimal investment. Watercolor pencils often feature a brush design on their barrels to highlight the water soluble nature of their leads.
Colored chart on Canson 90lb (185 gsm) watercolor paper displaying the expressive range of the set of 12 Crayola watercolor pencils: the left side of each color swatch was left dry, the middle shows how much brighter each color looks when wet, and the right side consists of the transparent color wash produced by dragging a loaded waterbrush on to the uncolored paper.
Dry sample illustration colored on white card stock with the watercolor pencils.
A large Kuretake Niji waterbrush was handy for smoothing out selected areas of dry watercolor pencil.
These Crayola watercolor pencils are versatile fun coloring tools that can be used dry and wet. They allow the precise control of regular colored pencils when sketching and drawing with them, and their dry marks readily dissolve into smooth delicate transparent color washes with the aid of a water loaded sable brush or a waterbrush. Worth trying for a creative change in your kids' art time or classroom.

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