Playing today with new pens.

Two very different projects, both coloured with my new pens, the Sakura Koi Brush Pens. I really like them.   I had watched Sarah Hurley demoing with them on Hochanda on Wednesday, and they arrived, beautifully packaged on Friday morning, pretty good service.

The first one with the butterflies was done on the watercolour journal that came with the pens. I deliberately limited my colours for this one, and concentrated on shading. The stamps are Clarity butterflies, and include the montage and the single butterfly from the centre.  I also used a couple of stencils for the background, including the Clarity butterfly.

The main stamped images were just coloured simply with the pens,direct to paper, but I loved how easily the pink and the yellow blended with no hassle at all.

The background is a combination of working through stencils, using coloured kitchen roll stuffed into the water brush to create a softer blend of the same colour (tip from Sarah Hurley), and also painting the stamps with the pen and then stamping into the background.

 

This pink butterfly was allowed to dry between applications of the pens, and then further colour added and that gave me quite different blends of the same colour.

This is the very first journal page I have ever done and although it was fairly simple, I am quite pleased with the result, and it has given me loads of ideas for playing more with these brushes.  Watch this space.

My second experiment was using them on parchment.  The image used here is actually  from PCA (Parchment Craft Australia), I think, and had been sitting waiting for inspiration on how to colour it.  So I decided to sacrifice it to experimentation and I was pleased with the result.

All the colour on this came from direct application on the back with the new pens.  Again, the shading was just done by allowing the ink to dry between applications, and it worked very well.

You can see the depth of colour better on the lilies on this close up.  I am sure I could have taken it further and got even more  depth of shading.

The water was created just by randomly dabbing the colour, leaving white spaces - no real technique there.

The set of pens came with a blender too, although I have not used that yet.  Sarah Hurley was also using a spritzer with coloured kitchen roll (do not rub the pen onto the kitchen roll - just roll the nib around the scrap of paper) which she then rolled up and put into the water filled spritzer.  Another technique I need to try.  I am sure that this would work well with other water based pens but I do like the large brush nib on these pens.