My Secret Garden colouring book, part 6 Testing different brands and types of pencils

Every type of pencil and pencil brand has its own characteristics. To make my hours of happy colouring even more fun and interesting I decided to try different brands and types of pencils.
Besides my beloved Bruynzeel Design Pencils I also have a beautiful set of Derwent Pastel Pencils.
I'm also experimenting with Cotmans water colour paint (by Winsor and Newton), a water brush by Derwent and graphite pencils.
With my niece and nephew I have frequent 'colouring parties' and they have some nice equipment as well which I try too: Derwent Coloursoft, Derwent Metallic Pencils, Derwent Water Colour Pencils and Bruynzeel Super Sixties.

If you want to purchase Johanna Basford's wonderful colouring book, you can use one of the affiliate links below:

      

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I started several pages colouring with my pastel pencils and because the paper in my copy of Secret Garden has a little tooth pastel pencil works pretty well!

The drawing above is only in the first stages of drawing. If you follow my blog, you already know I take my time with my colouring. I don't want to rush anything.

For blending my pastel pencils I use a 'colour shaper'. It's a silicon tip which makes it easy to work with the pastel pencil and rub it into the paper.

Colour shapers are available in many shapes and sizes. For pastel pencil, the smaller ones are most suitable, unless you want to use them to work on large areas of colour.

      

Here is another page from Johanna Basford's colouring book Secret Garden that I'm colouring with pastel pencils. I'm using the same method as with my Bruynzeel Design Pencils. layering. 

Colouring with pastel pencil is relatively new to me. Two years ago my husband gave me a set of these pencils (Derwent) but I used them only occasionally. Now that I'm colouring in m Secret Garden book, I'm learning about the techniques and improving my skills along the way.

I've come to the conclusion that I want another colour shaper, one I can use for the small details.

Derwent Coloursoft Pencils are popular for their softness and rich colours.

My niece has a set and when we are having our 'Colouring Parties' I work a little on a nice page with flowers and insects.

The next few weeks I will work on all of these pages. Of course I'll post my progress.

Happy colouring to you all!