Painting techniques for advanced

Most colouring designs are printed on paper that is suitable for the majority of colouring techniques (coloured pencils, fineliners or fibre-tip pens). If you’re prepared to put in a bit more work and take on a special kind of challenge, though, you’ll be rewarded with a very special picture.

Trace a design or part of a design onto watercolour paper using a 0.3 or 0.5 mm STAEDTLER pigment liner. This is best done on a light table, which you can create yourself using a sheet of glass and a lamp. If the design is too complex or extensive, just find a more interesting section. The thicker the watercolour paper, the more difficult the tracing will be. But the result will be more attractive, because the paper won’t crumple so much.

You’ll get a very special colouring experience with the STAEDTLER karat aquarell, a high-quality watercolour pencil. Just colour in the areas you have traced, in the same way as you would with any other coloured pencil. In larger areas you can transition easily between colours, but it’s better to keep small areas simple.

When you paint over your work with water afterwards, your “wash” will create fine gradations of colour. When adding water, be careful to use high-quality brushes that are an appropriate size for the area you are colouring. Leave individual areas to dry before you work on adjacent areas, otherwise all the colours will run into each other.

If you’re colouring in a design on watercolour paper using fibre-tips, you’ll notice that the colours are brighter than on normal drawing paper and above all that they run into each other better. This means that it’s easier to create beautiful transitions between colours. But you can also produce small transitions by placing drops of water within larger areas using a thin brush. Lines of water also give a lovely result.

Experiment a little on a separate sheet before you use water on a finished design. In principle water effects work better in dark areas than in light ones.