Inktense Pencils – Here is what I found out! A couple of weeks ago I purchase some Derwent inktense pencils from Amazon. I tried to buy them at Hobby Lobby and they were sold out. The cost for 12 pencils was $34.00. I love the brand Derwent because their regular watercolor pencils are awesome. One of the features of the inktense pencils is that when they are dry they are permanent. When I use regular watercolor pencils on fabric, I paint over them with textile medium and water to make them permanent. I thought they might be a good thing to add to my painting arsenal.

They come in a great little tin container.

Teal green, sun yellow, ink black, tangerine, leaf green, baked earth, sea blue, deep indigo, fushia, bark, poppy red, apple green. After opening them I realized that they were pretty muted colors for the most part.

Making a color chart on the fabric first helped me to see what those color tones were. Was a little worried because there isn’t a great color range in my set. Here is a picture of one layer of watercolors without the water.

I painted water on top of the pencils and it became apparent that it was going to be hard to control where the colors of the pencils went, You will notice how much they ran out on the left side. It takes a lot of water to get them to flow.

As always with anything painted on fabric it tends to fade when you heat set it.

Next, I filled in the flower with the side of the inktense pencil and then added water.

So far I wasn’t impressed. I was frustrated with the fact that the it kept running and not a wide range of color options. Then I worked on the leaves and was so excited! My first leaf pictured here was with watercolor pencils only.

The exciting part was when I painted the second set of leaves. The first step painting hookers green watercolor paints onto the leaves. In the second step, while it was still wet I used the inktense pencils on top and then heat set the whole thing. It was stunning!

My thought is that while it is not for primary areas, it will be invaluable when you use it for highlights. Buy the way the inktense pencils are very permanent after they are heat set. I will be looking for some blending colors now. Maybe purple, some other colors of green etc.

I hope this little tutorial gave you enough information to try out these pencils.