Do you need help with using Derwent Inktense? I’m sharing my 10 best tips for beginners with using Inktense. They’re similar to watercolor but different in some pretty major ways!\
Tip #1
Mix your Inktense blocks like you would a pan watercolor. Add water to your paintbrush, mix that with the block itself then paint that mixture onto your paper. This is going to give you super-smooth results without that gritty look you would achieve if you had applied the block itself directly to the paper and tried blending that out with water.
Tip #2
Mix water with your white inktense block to get the most opaque white mixture to paint onto your project. It will start trasnluscent but as it dries it will become completely opaque depending on how much water you used. Less water/thicker ink = more opaque!
Tip #3
To create lighter colors with your inktense pencils or blocks, mix more water with your pigment and let the white of the paper show through.
Tip #4
Use water soluble graphite to draw in your linework. These lines will then blend out completely as you add your Inktense so you don’t end up with ugly graphite lines showing through your painting!
Tip #5
Line your darker or black details first before you start glazing colors! If you paint these in with a mixture like we did in tip #1, your lines will stay in place!
Tip #6
Always test your colors on a scratch piece of paper. Once you blend them with water the color will look totally different than they did dry!
Tip #7
When you’re trying to keep your blending smooth and without showing brush strokes, keep that area wet the whole time you’re blending! Inktense is permanent when dry so once that area starts to dry, it’s not going to blend out when you add more color or water over it. Those brush strokes will always show. Instead, keep the areas you want smoothly blended wet with either a paint brush or even a fine mist sprayer while you work!
Tip #8
Layer until it looks good! This is a medium that is awesome for layering, especially given each layer is permanent, meaning it won’t lift when you add more water as watercolor would. Just keep layering, don’t give up when you hit an ugly stage, layer until it’s awesome!
Tip #9
To make the darkest black, paint on the black inktense block, then when dry add the ink black pencil inktense on top of that with a decent amount of pressure. This will be SUPER dark!
Tip #10
The Inktense pencils will only go darker on top of other colors, with the exception of the white pencil. The rest of the pencils will not come out lighter like you might get from colored pencils. If you need a lighter pink for example, you’re going to want to add white with the inktense block first (like shown in the video above), then add pink, or mix your white with the violet (or color of choice) to create a pastel color and paint that onto your work.
Supplies used: (amazon affiliate links)
- Inktense 72 pencil set http://goo.gl/P8drPi
- Inktense 72 block set http://goo.gl/R671RD
- Arches Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper https://amzn.to/3iMc99U
- Fine Mist sprayer (to put the fixative in) https://amzn.to/3iaaLPW
- Water Soluble Graphite Pencil https://amzn.to/3owrpvP
Why not wear it on our clothes or coffee mugs to make sure we don’t forget. LachriMerch.com
Get access to this and over 300 1-2 hour long tutorials in colored pencil, acrylic painting, oil painting, graphite, watercolor, charcoal, and inktense for as little as $4/month plus other rewards like high-quality reference photos to use in your own artwork.
Want to see all the available videos at Patreon? Look here!