Creating Watercolor Art with Tombow Dual Brush Pens and Water Color Pencils

Today I'm going to share my secret for creating watercolor art without the watercolors. I Love love the look of watercolored images but I don't know much about properly using watercolor paints. I'm a pen-in-hand kind of gal. If I can draw with it, I am much more successful… and drawing with a brush isn't something I'm a pro at yet. So, I have a handy little trick I use to create a watercolor look in my art without the paint. The key is using Tombow Dual Brush Pens and watercolor pencils. You'll need a blending pen too (also from Tombow), that's the magic wand in the batch! Keep reading to find out how you can win your own set of Tombow Bright Dual Brush Pens.

Creating watercolor art with Tombow Dual Brush Pens by Jen Goode

Today I'm sharing this watercolor technique along with the Tombow Design Team. We're hosting a whole hop, so you're headed for all kinds of creative fun today! We're talking about the Bright colored Dual Brush Pens… because we love them so.Make sure to look for the links at the bottom to see who else is joining. There are a wide variety of marker sets available through Tombow, these are happy, smiley colors you'll want for your bright and happy projects. I chose to focus on using only a couple colors so I could show you the technique without distracting you with all the color bling. Ohhh Shiney!

You can read through, or follow along… here we go!

Making Watercolor Art with Tombow Dual Brush Pens and Water Color Pencils

The watercolor pencil brand you use, I find to not matter as much. Although I do prefer the Prisma Color because they blend well. However, the blending markers you use does make a difference. The Tombow markers are water based and acid free… most blendable markers are alcohol base. The water base markers are what you need to get the pretty blended effect of the colored pencils. Tombow For the Win!

Materials you need:

Tombow Dual Brush Markers in a few different shades of blue
Light blue and Light purple water color pencils
Image to draw and color
Vellum – you can use regular paper, the vellum just gives a pretty translucent look
your creative mojo

Supplies you need to make watercolor looking art with Tombow Dual Brush Pens

Steps to making this snowflake art with the Tombow Dual Brush Pens and watercolor pencil technique

Place the vellum on top of your pattern and lightly trace the design outline with a pencil. Don't worry about being too precise, you just need the image roughly sketched out to work with.
Using the lighter of the blue pens, and the brush end, begin outlining the design. Alternate with a darker blue and randomly blend the colors together along the outline as you go.
Draw the background of the image. Use the colored pencils to create loose circles making sure to space out the circles a little bit randomly. I started out with a dense patch of circles in the corner and then spaced them out further as I moved around the page. Then go through and make more circles with a marker. Again, nothing needs to be exact. I went through a 3rd time with a second color of marker and then a 4th time with the light purple pencil. The more colors you use, the more dynamic the watercolor blending will be. Be careful not to use too many colors, so your art does not become muddy.
Watercolor blending. Now take the blending pen and start drawing on top of the art you've already drawn. Very loosely redraw the circles or make new circles, go over both the marker and the pencil. As you use the blending pen over these colors, the blender will pick up the color and you can draw with it in another place… almost like picking up paint and putting it down on the paper. As you add this layer of color, you'll notice the drawn lines begin to soften and the art begins to look like it was painted a bit. Cool huh!?
Repeat the blending on the snowflake itself, going almost the edge of the design and then using that color to apply subtle details within the design.
Continue until you like the look of the art.

Use vellum on top of your design for a more translucent art piece

Trace the design with pencil then apply marker color

Draw more circles with the markers - use both the brush and fine point ends — Draw more circles with the markers – use both the brush and fine point ends

Use blending pen to paint the colors together. — Use blending pen to “paint” the colors together.

Continue to blend the colors until you achieve the look you want

Some tips for using these markers:

Use the fine tip of the pen to draw details

Add colored pencil art before apply marker color

Use the blending pen to blend colored pencil and marker color together

The swirls in the middle were made with pick up color from blending

I hope you'e enjoyed this technique tip for creating your own watercolor looking art using Tombow Dual Brush Pens and watercolor pencils. You can use this technique to create so many pretty art pieces! Use regular paper or vellum, the look will vary, so play with your options to see what you like best.

Now, check out these other great designers and see what they are sharing today. AND, don't forget to comment below for a chance to win your own set of Tombow Bright Dual Brush Pens – YAY ART!

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Disclaimer: Tombow has provided me with the Dual Brush pens to share with you today, however I use these markers on my own when no one asks me to share… I do love them so!