Watercolor Pencils and Paper Comparison

After the last post sharing a dogwood flower using Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils in my Stillman & Birn Beta journal, I decided to play some more comparing other Stillman & Birn papers.

In doing the comparison I wanted to create like flowers using the same four colors.

 

The results are basically the same.

What I did learn from this is that the Alpha series paper absorbs the moisture quickly resulting in more water on brush, faster application, and more brush work to get the color to spread.  I didn't have to keep adding darker tones as I did with the other two papers and that may be because the paper absorbs the color more quickly (just a thought on my part.......not sure if that's the absolute reason or not).

With the Epsilon, the water really pooled making it real easy for backruns.  I had to take real care in dropping more pigment (from taking brush to tip of watercolor pencil and then to paper) as it would spread or run easily where the surface took longer to absorb pigment.....thus causing the backruns.

And although the Beta is a true watercolor paper and water sat on top for a few seconds, it still absorbed a bit faster than the Epsilon making the wet in wet quite enjoyable without the fear of blossoms (although I'm sure I could make it do so :-))  I had to drop more pigment to darken those areas close to the center to obtain the value I wanted but was able to do so without the backruns.

As I was working with these watercolor pencils, I learned something I hadn't realized with earlier experiments...............you cannot erase pencil lines even when dry.............at least not with a putty eraser.  I can't remember if my Derwent watercolor pencils erase or not.  I'll have to check that out ;-))

Painting these makes me think.........."Is it Spring yet??"