I’ve started a monthly course with Sew Nature on how to use Inktense Pencils. Inktense pencils are made by Derwent which is based in Keswick. They’re watercolour pencils that you can use either on paper or on fabric. As the name suggests they can make a really intense colour.

The pencils are a bit confusing to use as the pencil lead doesn’t look anything like the final colour, when I’ve tried before I didn’t get the even effect I wanted. Hence I decided to do a course. It’s a live zoom course once a month for about 1.5 hours and a video of the lesson is put on the members page afterwards. It’s only $10 a month which works out at less than £8, pretty good value!

Laura from Sew Nature is running the course. The first part has been teaching us about butterflies and how to attract them to our gardens. She is based in the US but there are a couple of us from the UK and she is making an effort to include plants and butterflies that live over here too.

The second part of the lesson is the practical bit. The first lesson was how to use the pencils, the effect different liquids have on the pencils, water makes them bleed out, a bit like silk paints, but aloe vera gel stops them from bleeding at all. Other liquids are available too, I happen to have one called ‘no flow’, it’s interesting to play around to see how the pencils react to each liquid.

Laura is basing the course on the basic box of twelve pencils. I’ve managed to inherit a box of 36 from my mum. I’m sure I’ve also got a box of 12 somewhere of my own. I sorted out my box so the twelve were all together. She had a really good chart for us to print out onto fabric so we could see how the different colours mixed together. I haven’t quite finished mine , I’ve some more colouring to do and then the aloe vera gel to add.

Last week we had the second lesson. She provided us with a flower design. It’s actually a gaillardia, a pretty orange garden flower. Unfortunately orange was the one pencil that was missing from my box! I decided to do a purple one instead. I used two shades of purple, a dark indigo and a bit of pink too ( I have to confess that the pink went on accidently as it looks purple in the pencil! Once it was on one petal it had to go on all of them!)

I managed to get a progress photo to give you an idea of just how much the colour changes. The centre has been coloured and wettened, the petals have just been coloured…

…and this is the flower after all the petals have been wet with aloe vera and also water in the middle…

Quite a difference! I’m thinking of quilting round this to finish it, maybe adding a little machine or hand embroidery. I still want to get a more even finish, a more smooth blending, practise required I think! Next month we’re learning how to colourwash a background. I think this could look nice on the side of a tote bag when it’s finished. Next month we’re doing what looks like quite a complicated picture of a monarch butterfly on some blossom…watch this space!