Test driving the Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils

One of my first art projects when I started getting back in to things was to draw portraits of our kids as an anniversary gift for my wife. I bought a bunch of Faber-Castell Aquarelle watercolor pencils for this and they worked fairly well. Watercolor pencils are like colored pencils except that instead of colored graphite, you get actual watercolor paint in the pencil. You draw like you would normally and by adding a wash of water you get a beautiful watercolor effect.

I love working in watercolor and this is an easy way to do it. The pencils that I had did have some frustrating qualities. They were a bit too hard and would leave gouges in my paper. They also didn't dissolve completely when you ran your wet brush over the pencil marks. While browsing through the art supply stores online I came across the high-end version of the pencils I had.

I had mentioned to Connie that I was looking at these Albrecht Durer pencils and soon she said, "Surprise! They're on their way." I was soon to be the proud owner of a set of twelve off of eBay.

When I got them I knew the first thing to do was to make up a color chart as it's impossible (or at least really hard for me) to remember what color pencil does what exact color.


From here I started to draw. Since this was the Nature set of pencils I thought an autumn leaf pile was a good place to start. Here's the work in progress.


And I'll post the finished version soon.