Dry Mediums Versus Wet Mediums

Hi! This week I'm going to talk about some of the major differences between wet and draw traditional art mediums. I won't go in to express details but just some general things to keep in mind.

Okay, lets begin!

Control-ability:

This is in general easier with dry media; Colored pencils and charcoal pencils can be sharpened to a point and do fine details, whereas things like watercolors and gouache is a lot harder to control because you need brushes and water. Markers are much easier if you want wet media, and the harder medium for dry would

be soft and oil pastels as they are neither brushed on nor always in pencil form but are closer to being small blocks most of the time, but you can but soft pencils in some places as pencils.

 

 

Blending:

Blended with baby-oil and blender pencil

Blending things like colored pencils is based off of layering and burnishing , there are many techniques including using a blender pencil, a white colored pencil, or baby-oil to blend colored pencils. For graphics pencils and soft pastels there are blending stubs that are made to blend the more powedery medium together, you can also use cotton swabs you buy from the bath section of he store or your finger, but I've had some unhappy accidents with using my fingers for blending like forgetting which finger had which color then I mixed and made an ugly color...ugggghhhh don't do that!

Watercolor blended with more watercolor and water

For watercolors you need water to blend, and water-based markers...well...you pretty much don't have a good blending capability with them unless you want to use them also as watercolors (how to do that will be

talked about another time). For alcohol-based markers they're blended using a colorless blender and eachother, different brands have colorless blenders and I have never used one but I have watched many other artists use them and they are quite useful.

Color Depth:

This is something that can be a bit irritating but c'est la vie. With wet media the color you put down is never the color that dries, it always dries lighter. Depending on the medium and quality, the color, texture, and depth will change from not so bad to drastic. For example, you can put down a wash of watercolor from a decent brand, the color you put on is vibrant and saturated, once it dries the white of the paper comes out a bit and lightens the color. Markers are the same, and a side tip never believe the color on the barrel of the marker, test it first, the colors they put on the barrel are never accurate; But anyway back on point... Here's another example: If you put down a medium purple but it looks very dark wait a few minutes for it to dry it will lighten up a bit. 

Colored with Colored pencil - Background with watercolor

Dry mediums on the other hand, the color you put down is the color you get, there is no drying time so whatever you see on the paper is what you will always see (as long as you consider aging which cause things to fade over time). Another thing to remember is the color of your paper will account for

the color of the medium you put down. If you have a black toned paper, don't expect to see any marker unless you have some kind of neon paint marker. If you use something like colored pencils on the other hand, you're much more likely to see the pencil. Lighter colors are obviously recommended.

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Okay, after reading these 3 contrasting differences which one do I think is better?

None! Each are different, and special, taking days, months and/or years of practice. And to be honest, I generally do not use only one medium in a drawing. Even in a colored pencil dominated drawing I will use watercolor for the background and/or pastels. For a marker piece I'll use colored pencils to shade. For watercolors I'll use water-based markers and colored pencils to shade. Just because these things are different doesn't mean they can't work together. I find it a bit amazing actually that each one of these mediums when used alone or together can all make photo-realistic artwork or super cartoony artwork. Some do it better than others, but the results are astonishing.

So where to start? Well, that's also for another time, but if I was to say anything, I'd say a graphite normal pencil, an eraser that works, and a sketch book. That's really all you need.

Now go out there and draw something! The world is looking for new things to discover!

Thank you for reading.

~ God Bless ~

~ Firefly