Using watercolour pencils
Watercolour pencils are a useful thing to take sketching with you. They can be used in a variety of ways to enhance texture, mix colours or even to provide paint.
I have shown a few ways of using them below, so try these out and see how you get on.
Brush water over pencil
Scribble a line of watercolour pencil onto your paper, and then brush water over this to see the effect. The wet brush will dissolve the lines, and pick up colour that can be used to make a wash. Once dry this wash is pretty immovable.
(I'm using my water-brush here, but you can use any brush dipped in clean water).
Mix colours with water
You can use the same technique to mix colours. First scribble down your pencil colours side by side, (I used yellow and blue here), then use a wet brush to merge the colours together.
Draw with pencil onto wet paper
Now try things the other way around. Wet an area of your paper and then scribble into this with a pencil. See how the pencil on dry paper (to the left in the picture) changes colour and the lines soften and widen. The colour is often much brighter when used in this way.
Use pencil as a paint pan
You can even use the pencils as if they were pans of paint, by lifting colour straight from them with a wet brush.
Make a pencil palette
Click on the picture to see how to make and use this handy pencil palette using watercolour pencils.