A Blue Poppy Real Time Watercolor! {greeting card quickie!}

Hi friends! Man, it has been a long time since I did a quick fun watercolor on a Strathmore watercolor card. I want to do more of these and hopefully it won’t take 3 tries to record it next time LOL!

I used a couple new products from Jane Davenport. Her new mixed media line is hitting stores tomorrow and I have had several viewers asking me to demonstrate the new watercolors and watercolor crayons and I aim to please. Watch the video to see how they perform and hear my thoughts and observations on these new paints!

Video!

I had a few people ask me how these compared to Dina Wakley’s new Scribble Sticks as well as Caran Dache Neocolor 2 crayons. There are a lot of points to compare here. Essentially they are all sticks of watersoluble media and you can use whatever watercolor crayons you have to get a very similar effect. You can even use watercolor pencils in some instances. One of the differences between crayons is the waxiness or dryness of the media. Watercolor pencils feel drier to color with where a watersoluble pastel like Prima is very slick and creamy/oily. Caran Dache falls nearer to an oil pastel where Dane Davenport Aquapastels are more dry like a pencil (very much like the ls Derwent Aquatones that were discontinued a few years ago-oh the humanity!) Dina Wakley Scribble Sticks are between the Aquapastels and Caran D’ache on the softness scale. These are small differences. Both Dina Wakley’s Scribble Sticks and Jane Davenports Aquapastels are more bright and transparent than the Caran D’ache Neocolor 2 crayons but that might have to do with the fact that they have a larger range including pastels so they would be overall more opaque (that said I have a hard time getting a vivid red in the Caran D’ache line but THAT said Caran Dache is my favorite watercolor crayon but they also usually have a steeper price tag but Amazon has the set of 15 for less than the two sets I am focusing on here, of course you can’t use a coupon like you can at the Big-Box.) I decided to compare the Scribble Sticks and Aquapastels together because a. I had several people ask me to and b. I already did a comparison on watercolor crayons last year before these came out and c. These are both brand new and aimed at the papercraft market. Here is a photo of both sets of crayons next to their tins.

I am a sucker for good packaging and they both are cute:) The scribble sticks are a bit larger but not as much as the tin might have you believe. Both sets have an insert to snugly hold the pastels. I’ll probably remove the insert on the DW tin and add some random crayons I have floating around:) Both crayons have paper wrappings to keep your hands clean, it’s pretty standard. The next image is a scan of each set watched so you can see what colors are in each set.

I was happy to see no overlap in color, here I swatched them all together in rainbow order. I think I might have too much free time on my hands.

The Scribble sticks felt softer as I colored with them and filled in the tooth of my paper easier, they were also better for picking up pigment directly from the stick with a brush.  The white crayon can be added to either the other scribble sticks or the Aquapastels to make a color more opaque which will give you the versatility of working on a colored surface or dark painting layer. The Aquapastels had less drag when sketching and coloring which is nice if you want to work quick and they held up to drawing on wet paper without the tip softening. Again minute details but worth mentioning. They felt more like a woodless watercolor pencil only a bit softer than a pencil.  Bottom line I like them both and they work great together. Amazon has the Scribble sticks for $23 and the Aquapastels are $24 at Michaels so they are comparably priced. I hope that helps anyone make a decision on what to get. As for the Glitz Sea watercolor set I found the quality to be the same as the original two watercolor sets she released earlier this year and you can see my full review here.

Phew, that was a long post but I wanted to get the info out while it was fresh in my mind. Will you be checking out any of these new art supplies or adding them to your wish list? Let me know in the comments below!  There will be a live show tomorrow at 12:30pm ET, til then, happy crafting!