Why I prefer painting in watercolour after years of working with coloured pencils
Anyone who paints with coloured pencils can tell you that they are a slow, tedious medium, often taking many hours to finish. Here are the main reasons why I love using watercolour more than coloured pencils.
Time
The number one reason why I love watercolour is time. I am a writer by trade, and it is simply too hard to spend eight to ten hours on a portrait using coloured pencils. For the 9×12″ portrait of Ana de Armas above, I clocked in at three hours just to draw and paint in the skin and features.
The hair, which is even more time consuming than the skin, takes hours to do. To get to this point with half of the hair done, I already clocked in six hours!
The finished portrait took NINE hours. My hand was getting tired, my carpel tunnel exacerbated, and my patience had run out around the fifth hour. I do love using coloured pencils, but I have to be in the mood for the long haul to do it, since I know I’d be working on it for eight to ten hours per piece.
It’s not just faces that take so long!
If you think only faces take that long to do, even smaller drawings take long too. Here is a Neapolitan cupcake I drew with Arrtx coloured pencils, which are not as opaque as Prismacolor Premier pencils. It’s a small drawing (4×6″), but it took me two hours to complete because it took more layers to fill the toned blue paper.
The main advantage of working with coloured pencils over watercolour is precision, which gives you a bit more control instead of potentially messing up if you load your brush with too much water. However, the advantages of watercolour far outweigh the cons.
Why I Love Watercolour
Letting It Loose
After years of drawing in every detail, it is quite liberating to be a bit loose, especially with hair and fur. The above fox painting took only half an hour to do, and I got to use salt to create texture.
This owl took an hour to do, but instead of getting impatient like I usually do with coloured pencils, I enjoyed painting it. It didn’t hurt my hand, it wasn’t some tedious micro blending motions I had to endure for hours. It was fun and relaxing.
Why I especially love watercolour is also the use of wet on wet, washes, glazing and lifting techniques, and its ability to cover large areas in relatively little time.
Bad Supplies Won’t Ruin Your Painting
Despite not having the best paper (this is Fluid hot pressed cotton paper), I could still make the painting work. With coloured pencils, if the coloured pencils are not great, or the paper isn’t good, it’s even harder to make it work. The worst part is that you spend a long time for nothing if the coloured pencils portrait doesn’t turn out great due to bad art supplies.
This painting, using just one shade (black), took just an hour and a half to do. With coloured pencils, It would have taken more than that just to do the hair. I didn’t do the best job with the hair, but it was my first attempt at painting a portrait in watercolour.
So there you have it, this is why I love watercolour. I look forward to working on my next painting already!
