Just Add Water

I have never been great at working with watercolors or India ink, perhaps due to my lack of patience with the need for layers and drying time, as well as my need to control what I am doing, which is difficult with water mediums.  When experimenting with marker wash, I found myself facing similar struggles to the watercolor and ink wash techniques.  With the Crayola maker, I had a hard time controlling my water application and the resulting puddles, and I found that the marks, when wet, produced a great deal of concentrated color, which looked great when I want a saturated, solid form.  However, in trying to achieve a gradient, I found myself frustrated with the amount of ink in the puddle and my inability to lighten it up.  When I attempted to create a sphere, I found myself holding the paper in a certain way so that the darker puddle could stay where I wanted it.  But in leaving it to dry, the color seeped into my intended lighter areas.

I had somewhat better luck with the Vis-A-Vis marker, which did not produce as dark a puddle, but also left more pronounced lines even after being heavily worked with water.  The result was a more sketchy-looking image that I found more aesthetically pleasing.

The most successful marker was a another water-based kind, the brand name of which I cannot remember.  But it produced the most even gradients and the colors stayed vibrant, which made for an enjoyable time creating a flower.  My class mates seemed to do well with this technique, creating several lovely pieces in the time we were allowed:

Although I feel more comfortable with watercolor pencils, I think this project would be a fun and easy way for students to experiment with water-based mediums.  I especially liked my classmate Mary's drawing, a portrait done with unexpected colors.  If I were to do a project with my students using this technique, I would probably have use a similar theme, creating a portrait or image with unexpected colors.  I feel as though this would challenge students to think more about the creation of value with the colors and allow them some creative freedom in their project.