Materials Monday: Prismacolor Watercolor Pencils

Watercolor pencils are probably my favorite mixed media material since they combine two tried and true notions — drawing and painting. Similar to ordinary colored pencils, watercolor pencils can be used dry, and you can simply color and shade with them. But the magic happens when you combine them with water.

I discovered these pencils when I first got into working in the visual journal many, many years ago, and they quickly became a staple in my journal work as well my mixed-media, stand-alone pieces. Prismacolor was the first brand that I purchased, and I’ve been using them ever since. Prismacolor is a maker of professional quality art materials, and their markers and colored pencils have been been very popular with professional and amateur artists alike.

The watercolor pencils are no exception to this professional quality, so a set may seem expensive, but you get rich, vibrant colors and sturdy pencils. They pencil form gives you a lot of control and the ability to shade a variety of values, but as soon as you paint water over your marks, the pigment blends and bleeds giving a very nice painterly effect. You don’t have to just use water. Any medium that is water-based will work to spread the pencil, and using a contrasting color of watercolor paint gives you some vibrant color blends. Water-based makers also work to blend the pigment, and by coloring a light colored marker over the pencil, you can create some very rich results. Dark colored markers overpower the pencil. You can also dip the point of the pencil in water and draw with the wet tip to give you a darker color that looks more like marker.

Above all else, I love using these pencils to layer. Building up layers of different colors can create a lot of depth and richness in a piece. You can use any of the techniques above, but I normally just paint clear water over each layer, and allow it to dry completely before adding a new layer. It’s easy to build up 5 or 6 layers or even more.

I only have a few small issues with these pencils, but it’s not enough to detract from the color, the vibrancy, and the quality. The first issue (perhaps it’s not really an issue, but just part of the nature of all watercolor pencils) is that it’s difficult to get precise, even edges. Since there’s a lot of painting, edges can blend and bleed, so I like to use regular colored pencil to refine edges and even out any splotchy areas. The second issue is that many of the lighter colors are not completely transparent and have white in them, giving them a bit of a cloudy effect making it more difficult to build the rich, transparent layers that I like. My final issue is that the smallest set of 12 colors doesn’t have purple. It’s rather annoying since the reds and blues they include don’t mix to give you a vibrant purple. There are three different greens, but no purple. I’ve always scratched my head at that decision.

These are some great pencils to have in your artistic tool bag, and they’ve served me well over the years.

Journal Friday #89: Thinking

I haven’t worked too much in my journal this week other than some note taking and some writing. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the stories that we tell ourselves about our creativity. I’ve been reading a lot and contemplating how we connect to our creativity, and of course, there are some people who don’t believe they are creative. It’s all about the types of stories we tell ourselves. So, how do we change the stories?

Thinking Thursday: My Story

I think that I take it for granted that people just know my story. I’ve been blogging since 2007, and I’ve been on Facebook since 2008, so it’s easy to forget that there are people that are just now discovering what I do, and they may not know who I am or where I come from.

So I wanted to take sometime as this New Year begins to reintroduce myself and share my story.

In the most concise way, my story is that I am an artist, writer, and educator that believes that everyone is creative, and I am on a mission to help people reconnect with their creativity. Now a lot of people will argue that they don’t have an ounce of creativity, but that’s just not true. It might be buried. It might be closed off. It might be locked away, but like writer Patti Digh would say, if you are human, you are creative.

Why do I believe that? I don’t believe it, I know it. I have been making art for more than 40 years, and I’ve been teaching for more than 20. I feel that I’ve learned a thing or two about creativity in all of that time. I have always loved art. I drew and colored continually as a child, and I pursued it and went to school for it. I taught art for 20 years in the public schools of Maryland and Virginia. In 2016 I stepped away from public school teaching, but I continue to teach at retreats and workshops across the US. I also manage and teach at a local art center in Round Hill, Virginia. I continue to make my own art, and I draw, paint, sculpt, and work in a visual journal. I have spent my life exploring my own creativity, and figuring how to help others be more creative.

Now creativity isn’t just an art thing, it’s a human thing, and you don’t have to want to make art to be creative. As Sir Ken Robinson says, creativity is about coming up with something new that has value. Creativity stretches across all human endeavors. Without creativity, we wouldn’t have landed on the moon, and we wouldn’t have the internet, and we wouldn’t have the music, the movies, the clothes that we love. We always have problems to solve, things to figure out, and lives to make the best of. This all takes creativity. As a visual artist, I approach creativity from that direction, but we are all creative.

When I first got into teaching, I thought that I wanted to teach my students about art, but as the years went on, I found out that, yes I was teaching them about artists, materials, and techniques, but more importantly, I was teaching them how to connect with their creativity. I’ve worked with thousands and thousands of children and adults, and I am always blown away by the things they can come up with when they can let down their defenses and create from an authentic place.

This notion is why I don’t teach projects — why I don’t craft recipes for people to follow to make the things that I make. I’d much rather share ideas and techniques, and help students find their own voice and create the work that is meaningful to them. This philosophy led to the two books that I coauthored with David Modler, The Journal Junkies Workshop and Journal Fodder 365. In these books, we share ideas, concepts, materials, and concepts, but never tell people to make and create certain things. In everything that I do, I want to help people realize that they are truly creative individuals capable of creating meaningful lives.

Of course, I’ve left out a whole lot of details, but I’m not setting out to write a memoir, just to set the stage for my story. And I hope that I can help you to reconnect with your creativity and inspire you to create the meaning that you seek!

The Joy of Painting

As a young artist, I loved Bob Ross. It was like magic watching him paint, and my dad and I looked forward to watching him each week on our local PBS station. As someone with limited painting experience, Bob Ross was my entry into that world — the world of an artist, and I think it was for Christmas during my 10th grade year in high school that I got my first oil painting set — a Bob Ross oil painting kit. It was a big splurge for my parents, and I immediately went to work painting my own Bob Ross paintings. I even purchased a couple of his books to expand my painting repertoire, and for several months or so, I enjoyed emulating his style, and I painted quite a few landscapes with happy little trees, craggy mountains, and rundown cabins.

But after a time, it just didn’t feel right to keep going that route. It started to feel like a rut, and I began to push myself in other directions, trying to paint things other than Bob Ross landscapes with my Boob Ross oil paints. Soon I was painting vases and flowers and people. I had branched off in my own direction, and I left those Bob Ross landscapes behind. I continued to paint, but I had to discover my own way.

I think that this experience really encapsulates my approach to artmaking and creating. Something excites my attention, I give it a go, and then figure out how to incorporate it into the things that I do. I may see something that intrigues me in the colors someone uses or in the way they use a certain material, but I don’t want to do something exactly the way they do. That doesn’t excite me, and there’s nothing there for me to discover. They have already discovered it, and art, to me, is all about a personal discovery. 

This has colored the way that I teach and what I want my students to get out of an experience with me. I don’t want them to mimic and copy me — to make what I make — to create work that looks like mine. I want to share ideas, techniques, and modes of working with them, and have them figure out how to take some of those things and infuse them into their way of working. I want to help them discover their voice.

Bob Ross paintings remind me of the paint and wine nights that have been quite popular over the past few years — someone leading you step-by-step to create a very specific thing. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, and many people feel they need that. But for me, I don’t want that as a student, and I don’t want that as a teacher. I am much more interested in opening myself to my own ideas and helping others uncover their own, and if I’ve planned it all out, if I’ve solved all of the problems, then my students are merely manufacturing a product. I want my students to have a creative experience, where their ideas and their choices matter.

But that involves risk, and many people don’t want to take that risk. They are content with following a recipe, but they could do so much more — be so much more. So, how do we step out of our comfort zones? How do we take these risks? How do we create with courage and confidence?

These are the questions that I’ve been trying to answer for myself, and I’ve been exploring these ideas for years trying to figure out what works for me. But it’s different for everyone. Everyone has their own things, their own issues, their own noise in their heads to contend with. Perhaps some of the things that I do can work for them.

These aren’t easy issues to contend with, and it’s going to take time. But I want to offer ideas, techniques, and modes of working that you can infuse into your way of working. This is why I’ve started a podcast, committed to create more online workshops, have created videos, and written more blog posts. I want to help you connect with your creativity, and I am hoping that you will join me on this journey.