Snake

Snake. NeocoloursII on watercolour paper

The background was done with a stabilo 68 pen. You can create nice textures by changing the directions of the strokes.

I painted the snake by applying some of the shavings of the watersoluble wax crayons with a brush and by taking the pigments off the crayons with a wet brush. I noticed, that I had to be careful not to have too much water on my brush when I did the latter – otherwise the paint is far too watery and liquid.

 

Cat Sketch

I used a photo as reference which was provided by Floyd in the Watermedia Forum at Wet Canvas. The photo can be seen here.

It was a quick sketch, done without erasing.

Foxgloves

This is my contribution to the August challenge of the Floral and Botanicals Forum over at Wetcanvas – Foxgloves.

I used the shavings of my neocolourII watersoluble wax crayons, diluted with a grop of water, applied with a brush. I used one of the reference photos there as a general inspiration and guideline.

Triangles

Triangles. NeocolourII on watercolour paper.

Here I played with the geometrical form of triangles and with warm and cool colours. I also mixed making marks with the crayons on the paper with applying the colour with the brush.

Little Bird

Bird. NeocolorII on watercolour paper

After having done quite a lot of abstract paintings I wanted to try something more real – a little bird, sitting on a branch. It is not realistic, though, but it can be identified as a bird, I think. Of course there is not bird in such colours – so it is kind of a fantasy bird.

I am still excited about the ways you can use those watersoluble wax crayons – in this painting I didn’t make any marks with the crayons and only applied the paint with a brush.

The background was done with a stabilo 68 pen. Some might wrinkle their noses because of the streaks; however, they didn’t happen – I very intentionally created them when I coloured with the stabilo 68 pen.

Dragon King

Doing colouring pages is a very good way to learn to know your pencils, and so I decided to choose a dragon and try my best. I used polychromos coloured pencils from Faber-Castell, one or two pablos from Caran d’Ache and one from Staedtler. I also used stabilo fineliners to add some hightlights and contrasts. I worked with a quite limited palette, only using reds, blues and yellows. Reds and blues once were colours only for kings resp. for Queen Mary – the reason for that was that they were hard to get and very expensive.

Green Curves

Green Curves. Oil pastels thinned with alcohol, on watercolour paper.

Another experiment I did with my oil pastels. As they are studio quality and quite hard to blend with the fingers I took a brush and my small bottle of isopropanol and blended them with alcohol. The difference between the single colours is amazing – red, yellow, orange and even the pink are still strong even when diluted, whereas the greens are losing their vividness. So I decided to draw the lines of the green curves with my polychromos coloured pencil after having sprayed a fixative on the painting.

Wood in the Water

Wood in the Water. Oil pastels diluted with baby oil on watercolour paper.

Some days ago I dediced to get an annual subscription for artistnetwork.tv. Actually it was on the last day before my vacation began, and I thought that I should give myself a present. I browsed through the catalogue and found out that they had videos on abstract art. I began to watch one and felt inspired to give myself and my oil pastels a try.

But I must admit that I didn’t like the crumbles you get (okay, that depends on the quality of the oil pastels, I know) and so I was looking for ways to get rid of them. I learnt that you can thin oil pastels with turpentine. I knew that baby oil serves as a thinner for coloured pencils, and I’d already done that with my polychromos which are oil-based. So I was very curious whether and how thinning would work with oil pastels and baby oil. You can see the result above. In reality the painting is a bit more on the greenish side; due to my scanner it’s got a more blueish touch.

However all in all I’m quite satisfied, and in addition to that it was so much fun to work with the paints!

Colourful Stones

Colourful stones. NeocoloursII and markers.

This time I focussed on using red/orange, violet/pink and blue, and mixing them on the paper. Those neocolours don’t every really dry – which means, that you can mix them on the paper when you rewet them. I painted the stones in the circle by first making the marks on the paper with the dry crayons and then wetting them with a brush. You can see that you can get many interesting structures when you do it this way. The yellow in the middle was put on with a brush, taking the pigment from the tip of the crayon.

 

Colorful Pattern

Another painting done with the NeocoloursII watersoluble wax crayons, or, precisely speaking, with their shavings which I diluted with a drop of water. I mixed my reds with yellow, getting various shades of red, my greens with blue, thus getting various hues of blue, and also my blues with red, thus getting some nice deep purples.