Dia de la Abby: #4 - Watercolor Skull

For the last few months, I've been wanting to make a piece with flowers growing out of and around a skull. I wanted to make it as if it had been buried and worked it's way up to the surface of someone's garden. It wasn't until the other day, that I finally decided on a medium...water color pencils. I haven't used water colors in about 15 years, but with inspiration from Noah's Watercolor Skull and many years of colored pencil use, I figured I could make it work. This took many hours to make, but I like how it came out and it was worth the time to try some old techniques in a new way.

I would include a tutorial for this one, but there is an excellent one that I used, so I suggest using this tutorial for Watercolor pencils and crayons too. It has images and clear instructions for different ways to use them. I applied mine dry to the paper (it looks just like a regular colored pencil when you apply it), then used a small brush with a little water to blend the pigment on the paper. To intensify some of the colors, I took the small wet brush and got some pigment off the pencil (I loaded the brush like you would with a regular set of paints). There are some other techniques mentioned, that I didn't use, but feel free to experiment and find what works best for you.

Every week in the 4.0 year, I will be post my own Dia de la Abby posts as well as a tutorial with instructions on how I made my piece. Hopefully you feel inspired by my posts just as I was by Noah's Skull-A-Day 1.0 daily project.