Derwent Inktense pencils, I love them!

I'm back and in color! My birthday was last week, I was going to buy this as a gift to myself when I found out my friend ordered it for me, yeah! Derwent Inktense Pencils

I have been fascinated with them for a LONG time, they work like a colored pencil, watercolor pencil and ink all at the same time. You can lay down color then go over it with water like watercolor, then once it's dry, the pigment is permanent like ink.

I played around a bit with them as soon as I got them home, here are the two things I did, both are flowers, you can click the image to view full size:

The yellow flower above, I did that on Pen Sketcher's paper, 11"x8.5", it says it's a heavyweight paper made for pencil, pen and ink & pens, recommended for Prismacolor markers, I will say the paper is smooth, very smooth, but I wouldn't call it heavy, you can't go over something multiple times if the medium is wet otherwise the paper rolls up and buckles. I'll use that paper for strictly ink work, but nothing wet, I would question how well markers would work on this.

The next flower below, a nightshade that resides in my front yard, that was done on Strathmore Mixed Media 300 series paper, 9"x12", vellum surface, now THAT is some paper to use in this method, it IS thick, smooth, takes the colored pencil well and more importantly, it takes the moisture well without buckling or falling apart when you go over it multiple times.

 This is the Derwent Inktense Pencils, I got the 24 pack.

I used a waterbrush to activate the pencil to ink, you can see my waterbrushes 2 pictures above, they are on the left of the computer, one has a blue band and the other has a red band, there is a third in the set. An idea I had and it works is to use a Koi colorless blender brush pen to do some of the fine work, it blends the pencil/ink without causing it to bleed, I was very impressed with how that worked. Hopefully with my new camera, and if I can find my tripod, I'll make an attempt at doing a video

I am quite happy with them, I'll go over to my friend's house tomorrow and we can both play with these pencils, I can't wait to see what we create.