First Figure Drawing Sesh of the Year! (NSFW) (Patreon)

I got back home a day later than expected (if you caught my tweets on Monday, you know why), but 24 hours later I was home and fully onboard for figure drawing, despite my jetlag! 

Michael and Tim didn't meet at all while I was gone, and I'm gonna pretend it's because they couldn't bear to draw without me, awww. 

I brought this funky Caran d'Ache Water Brush in Copenhagen and decided to try it with my cheap Prang watercolor set last night, on a cheap Blick watercolor block. There's definitely a learning curve! The idea is that you fill the reservoir with water, which you can dispense slowly into the brush by squeezing the purple "push" buttons on the shaft. So you don't need a separate cup of water to keep your brush wet, making it ideal for travel.

Here are some 5-minute warmups with the brush:

(I didn't love the third pose out of four, can ya tell?!)

We did a long pose afterwards. Here's my first attempt at the first pose (getting all the lines out...):

Probably 40 minutes? And here's my 20-minute simplification:

We decided to change to a new pose midway. I'm pretty happy with the last one, considering how tricky it was for me to get used to the brush!

The trickiest thing about using this tool is that it dispenses a whole big DROP of water at a time into the brush, which is a LOT of water. So I used two separate sections of the Prang palette - one for VERY watered-down purple, and one with a higher concentration of purple paint. I'd dispense that whole drop of water into the "watered down" section, just to get rid of it, and then towel off my brush enough that it was no longer soaked, and use that less-soaked brush to pick up the more concentrated ("darker") purple paint. 

(It's also really disorienting to not have a cup to continuously dip into if you're used to that, which I am! Muscle memory and all.)

So, my verdict: not great for straight watercolor, especially if you have the space to bring a few brushes and a separate cup of water. The process of bleeding out a drop of water and then dabbing the water off the brush is a little too time-consuming to be worth the convenience of having the water IN the brush. 

But it's a great tool to have on-hand if you're traveling!

I actually broke in this brush at a cafe in Copenhagen, and had a completely different and more positive experience, because I used it differently - with watercolor pencils. 

I took process photos of that drawing, so I'll share it with you later and show you what a waterbrush IS good for!