My water colour paintings start out as pencil drawings. Then I use water colour pencils to paint them. I am not into the technical business of mixing my own colours so I have a huge number of pencils to give me a wild and bright palette. Sometimes I just stare at the pencils and marvel at all the different colours. Below is a drawing I did when some of my students were working with pencil and I wanted to show them about making tones with pencil. It started out as aid to show them but ended up being something very personal and the start of more images.