Derwent Inktense Treasure Hoard

I was VERY fortunate recently to be given the set of Derwent materials you see in the photo above.  Included were:

•  36 Inktense watercolour pencils 
•  12 Inktense watercolour  blocks
•    3 watercolour block Grippers
•    and a Grate 'n Shake

If you've never used the Derwent Inktense line of products, you are really missing something special, and really rather different than any other watercolour media I've used, especially other pencil sets.

I've been messing about with watercolours since I was a kid, but really only seriously in the past few years.  I discovered watercolour pencils in the 90s, but found them grainy and difficult to use.  Rather than the lovely fluid movement achieved with pan or tube colours, pencils scratched the page, leaving behind pencil marks and clumps of colour along with bare spots.  They were useful as VERY casual sketching tools, but not for doing any real work.

As the years passed, I occasionally found another brand of pencils, but never found any that were pleasing at all until I discovered the Derwent brand.  Not the Inktense...they didn't exist yet.  The Derwent pencils were a shade better than the General's Kimberley, Prang, Prismacolor, or the Staedtler Karat, but only if used by pulling the colour from the pencils rather than drawing on the page and THEN wetting it.  Which, btw, is one of my favourite ways to use the Inktense, too.

So I muddled along with the Derwent watercolour pencils until one day, when I walked into the art supply store to find a new Derwent display labeled Inktense.  Ever hopeful that I'd find the perfect watercolour pencil, I tried one on a test page in the store.  It went on smooth and creamy instead of grainy and scratchy or just too hard.  And then I smeared some spit (hey, there WAS no water available) into the pigment and was impressed by how saturated the colour was.  So I bought three colours as a test and an adjunct to the other watercolour pencils I was using.  I bought Deep Indigo, India Ink, and Leaf Green.  All dark colours, and basic to my preferred palette.

After using those three colours more than all the rest of the other type of pencil altogether, I knew I needed to have more, More, MORE! BWHAHAHA!!!

These pencils lay on better than any similar product, and the colour is rich.  One thing that I really like is the permanence of the colours.  I can paint one area, let it dry a VERY little bit, and then paint right on top of it without altering the colour.  With traditional watercolours, I frequently have to wait and wait for the piece to dry before I continue painting.  The blocks are simply the same pigment as the pencils, but in block form, which allows for a wide variety of marks when using them directly on paper.  The gripper devices are for holding the blocks while drawing with them.  I'll get to the grate n shake in a sec.

Here's how I use the pencils, the blocks, and the grate n shake.

Kuretake Phys Waterbrush

Although I occasionally draw directly on paper, and when I do, I use an extremely light touch because of how much pigment is delivered, my most common method is to touch my wet brush to the pencil, loading my brush with pigment and then laying that onto the page.  I prefer using a Kuretake Phys waterbrush to my favourite sumi brushes.  Pentel also makes a good waterbrush, though it generally tends to be a bit drier than the Kuretake.

Pentel Waterbrush

Steamy Gentleman

I find loading my brush with pigment and using that to paint with gives me a LOT of control over where the colour goes and how much I lay down.  Too much?  Wipe the brush and just touch the area again with the wet tip, and it will lift a little colour out.   I do precisely the same thing with the colour blocks, but they allow me to load more colour far quicker than with the pencil tips.

I also use the Inktense products in conjunction with other media, including Daniel Smith Watercolour Sticks and Copic Markers.  Steamy Gentleman (to the right) was done with a combination of Inktense, Copic, and Rapidograph pen.  Crow Mechanic (below) is pure Inktense, with a little white gel for a very few highlights.

Crow Mechanic

I promised you information on how to use the Grate 'n Shake.  It's a pretty cool tool, really.  You use it with the blocks, not the pencils.  You can grate some colour into the receptacle, and then add water to it for use with a more traditional painting method, OR..and this is the really cool part...you can grate more than one colour into the receptacle with some water and thus blend your own colours.  But there's one more trick that I like to use the grater to achieve.  I like to grate a set of colours into the dry receptacle, then shake them onto the page, and spray them with water.  Instant colour explosion!  Throw a little salt into the mix and you've got even more instant magic!  Cool, huh?