Colored Pencil Creations

This clock was colored with artist pencils. With so many attractive wooden forms and containers available at your craft stores, it's not difficult to find an item to color. Figure A Figure B Figure C

By Carol Duvall

I've found my niche! Coloring with pencils! I've managed to prove time and time again that I am no painter, but when it comes to crayons, I can finally be a winner. In fact, at the age of nine, I won a coloring contest sponsored by the Milwaukee Journal.

All of this coloring with pencils on wood all started with our introduction to Walnut Hollow's new line of oil pencils. Oil pencils are not a new item on the market, as any painter can tell you, but I do believe that they are a new item in the craft world. So we had to give them a try. Keep in mind that these words come from a non-painter who experimented, from an artist friend of mine who knows, and from the brochure that came with the pencils. All coloring was done on wood . . . not paper.

The pencils come in sets of 36, 24, or 12. Turpentine or Grumtine may be used as the liquid mixing agent. Grumtine is a bit more purified than turpentine, is available at art supply stores, and doesn't have as strong an odor as turpentine. It is also more expensive.

Steps:

1. Sand your wood and wipe it clean of sawdust with a tack cloth.
   
   
2. Seal wood before coloring to help keep the color from being absorbed by the wood. A wood sealer or light coating of matte spray acrylic will do the job.
   
   
3. Experiment with different painting techniques. Use a light touch or press very hard to get more brilliant color (figure A).
   
   
4. Dip the brush in turpentine and brush over the colored part to blend the strokes and to give the surface a more painted appearance (figure B).
   
   
5. Use a dark pencil for the main color and highlight by going over the coloring with a lighter colored pencil. Colors can be blended by rubbing with a cotton swab (figure C).

• When coloring in a figure or design, you will notice that even if you have sprayed the surface ahead of time, occasionally the colors will start to run or bleed into the next area. To help prevent this, try to minimize the amount of turpentine you use near the borders.
  
  
• Another way to help prevent the colors from bleeding is to draw the design on a piece of paper, then trace it onto the wood using a ball-point pen. The indented line acts as a small deterrent to the bleeding color. Wood burning does an even better job.
  
  
• A wonderful look can be obtained by rubber stamping and embossing an image onto the wood and then coloring in with the pencils. The raised embossed line will also prevent the colors from bleeding when you add the turpentine to your art.

• Another way of getting the watercolor effect (besides adding water to your brush after coloring the surface) is to rub the wet brush against the pencil before coloring.
  
  
• Colors can be made more intense by dipping the pencil in the water before coloring.

Most interesting of all was a wall plaque made by producer Linda Watson. Linda first stampeed an image of a Mary Engelbreit stamp ("The Queen of Everything"). This she enlarged on a black and white copy machine. She wet down the wooden plaque with a water dampened brush, then placed the black and white image face down on the dampened wood and rubbed very hard. The image was transferred to the wood and was just visible enough so that it could be colored in. She then drilled two holes in the plaque and added a checked green and white ribbon for a hanger. It's terrific!