Playing with Inktense pencils

I bought a box of 12 Derwent Inktense pencils in 2008, but haven't done a lot with them (besides colouring in parts of a Christmas stitchery). I discovered that Eckersleys art shop in Brisbane has the full range of Inktense pencils available to purchase in boxes or individually. So now I have a whole lot of colours! :-) Plus I now have an outliner pencil (dark grey pencil that doesn't react to water) - good to draw the basic design with.

To use these pencils on fabric, you need to use textile medium with them. You can either paint on the textile medium and then draw over with the pencil, or draw with the pencil and then paint over the textile medium. I traced a few leaves and hearts with the outliner and set about colouring them in. Then I used textile medium (1 part medium, 2 parts water) with a fine brush and painted over each coloured area, cleaning the brush in water between each colour. I also did some very fine lines surrounding the leaves, creating a halo, and painted over. Colouring first and then painting with the textile medium keeps the colours lighter, as seen in this photo:

Next I experimented with doing both methods to see the colour difference. The red flower on bottom right was done by painting on the textile medium first, then colouring in with the pencil. Much more intense colour this way. The top left flower was done by colouring first, then painting over with textile medium. The photo on the right shows how the colour intensifies as you paint on the textile medium.

Here is the finished block with the two techniques used. The colours in this block generally are brighter, as more of it was done by painting first.

I think the damp cloth draws more colour out of the pencil as you use it. You do need to be careful that the cloth isn't too wet (esp if you go over your line), as it will bleed into that wet area. I also found it harder to have different strengths of the same colour. eg when colouring in on dry cloth, you can put a heaver concentration of colour in different spots (eg as shadowing), but I couldn't do this with the other method. Of course, it may simply be that this is my first experiement! :-)

It has been decades since I played with colour pencils (except helping little girls to colour in). I really need to play some more.....