Zentangle Untangled (16 page)
Read Zentangle Untangled Online
Authors: Kass Hall
I started using watercolor pencils one Christmas while staying with my in-laws. They have a beautiful garden, and I decided to pass some time by drawing the flowers they grow using some basic watercolor pencils I had picked up at a local art store. It’s a fabulous way to add color and, like Inktense, watercolor pencils can be used wet and dry.
Watercolor pencils are more transparent than Inktense—more like watercolor paints (obviously!)—but you can build up color with them and achieve more vibrancy. Experimentation will bring a good working knowledge of these brilliant pencils.
I usually wouldn’t recommend one product over another, but in the case of watercolor pencils, I cannot go past the Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer range. They are flawless, strong and peerless. They’re not the cheapest, but they are absolutely worth every cent (and can be bought individually if you want to build a collection over time).
Over the years I think I have tried every art medium known to mankind. Acrylics were a long-time favorite, but as I started to become more mobile, I needed something more flexible. On chance a few years ago, I bought a set of watercolor pans at an art store in New York. They have changed my life. They are easy to carry and provide vibrant color. The ones I bought were less than twenty dollars for a set of thirty-six colors, student-grade pans. I’ve since invested in expensive, artist-grade pans and, if you can keep a secret, I much prefer my cheap ones! They are wonderful proof that you do not need to spend a lot of money to get great results.
The big advantage of watercolors with Zentangle is their ability to cover large areas or provide minute details. The Sakura Pigma Micron pens are waterproof, so you can either put pen to paper first and then add watercolor, or put your color down first and then add pen (make sure your paint is completely dry first to avoid pen-bleed).
Many people love watercolor paint in tubes and enjoy mixing the water themselves. Tube colors can often be more pigmented and brighter, but they don’t provide the flexibility of pans, particularly if you are on the road. Whatever suits you is great—there are no rules!
Sez
appealed to me at first sight. Its retro look is so much fun.
Sez
is when color is added. The concept of
Sez
is quite simple, but instead of using pen to create lines, I chose to let the color of the paint create the lines. It was painstaking work to create (I used analogous colors violet, red and blue in various shades) and then I created the “linking circles” in orange (which continued the analogous theme). Playing with color can be an effective and simple way to create a point of difference without actually doing something differently than first taught.
Cyme
and a tanglation of the pattern
Pokeleaf
.
is a “go-to” tangle for me. It pops up in my Zentangle and art journaling work regularly. It is an organic, flower-based tangle. When I created
The Summer Garden
, I started with several smaller flowers at various places on the page and then gradually built them out until they connected. This wasn’t deliberate—I just let the pen take me where it needed to go. Once the pen work was finished, I chose my color palette and tried to mix it up as much as possible. I then added the leaf tangelation of
Pokeleaf
. Finally, I felt that the whole page needed a background color and the blue was a perfect complement to the summer, citrus palette of the flowers.
Gouache is a type of watercolor paint that was traditionally used by graphic designers before the arrival of computer design technology. It is an opaque paint that is activated by water and dries to a matte finish. Many designers still use gouache, as do illustrators, but it does takes some practice. Gouache looks fantastic on printmaking and watercolor papers.
Take a squirt of gouache from your tube and add water. I do this one drop at a time because if it becomes too watered-down, gouache becomes more transparent. It is important that you mix enough and use your paint in one sitting; it will stay wet in the palette for a few hours but will eventually dry out. However, once you get the hang of using gouache, it has the potential to become a favorite medium.
Gouache can be used as a large coverage paint, as well as providing detailed work. This makes gouache a beautiful companion to Zentangle.
