Tombow Irojiten & Hobonichi Techo
It is a seriously gloomy day here! Our power has been flickering, it's pouring out and super windy. The perfect day to journal, read and nest! ;)
Yesterday I received some happy mail- Tombow Irojiten colored pencils in the Woodland set. Last night I swatched them in my hobonichi techo and today I'm playing around with them, I thought I'd share my initial thoughts!
I want to try colored pencils more this year as opposed to brush pens, markers and ink because while I love my hobonichi, I really get frustrated with ghosting. Ghosting is when the image shows through onto the back side of the paper. It's not physically bleeding through the paper, it's just a hint of the previous image. Tomoe River paper is truly wonderful. It's smooth, feels so nice to draw and write on. But it's incredibly thin so ghosting can happen.
I had a set of prismacolor pencils that I played with a tiny bit towards the end last year and I enjoyed them. My set was from college and has lived a full life, including many drops and sharpening issues so the lead isn't in the best shape. ;)
I was drawn to this set of colored pencils because the packaging is beautiful, the colors are really unique and the swatches from other artists looked interesting.
You can see the ghosting from January 7th on January 8th- I had used some rain cloud stamps because: rain. I'm never quite sure what to do when ghosting happens. Do I cover the images? Do I just ignore them? Add washi? It's something so small, I don't know why it throws me off! :D
I ended up tracing the clouds and filling them in with one of the pencils and swatching all the colors. The pale and light grayish tone sets are so, so, so subtle. I didn't really press down, I just started a little firm and gradually lightened the pressure to create a gradient. I'm not sure if the pencils aren't super pigmented, if I need to use more pressure or if i should layer them more!?
I have a feeling I'm going to like using them but will have to build up layers. It'll be fun to experiment through out the year with these! I found this review which is really comprehensive about these pencils in case you'd also like to know about them. Mostly I'm looking to do some sketches and filling in stamped images. Previously I used Kuretake ZIG Clean Color brushes and they are SO GOOD. They do take forever to dry and sometimes I smudge things or over mix the colors. Also they can wrinkle the pages which doesn't bother me but towards the end of last year my hobonichi was so fat and hard to close!
The right hand side under the paper cut was done with the brush pens and it was really fun! I like watching people on youtube do galaxy paintings so it was my inspiration.
In case you'd like to know my favorite comfort food from my entry and poor penmanship. ;) Cranberry Mustard Chicken Tenderloins! My mom made this when I was a kid, I found the recipe last night after thinking about it all the time lately! It turns out it's super fast and easy to make. My mods were tapioca starch instead of flour and I halved the butter/oil because I cooked the chicken in one batch. I like that the first comment says they've been making it since 1998! :D
This post contains affiliate links to amazon.com. That means if you click the link and purchase something, I earn a tiny percentage of your purchase without any additional cost to you. All items I talk about are things I've purchased myself with my own money. :)
