So many mistakes…

A month ago I posted a pic of one of my coloring pages that I was getting ready to color with some Prima Pens that I had never used before.  I was so excited to try them out and then I put pen to paper and that excitement drained away.  Something was clearly not right.  The initial Prima Pen was fine – the color was flowing and going on to the paper well.  The problem was the blender.

Let me rewind a bit first though.  I’ve done a lot of blending with watercolors, watercolor pencils, and regular colored pencils.  One of the first mistakes I made in this undertaking was assuming that blending with markers would be similar to blending with watercolor pencils.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Okay – back to the current topic – the blender pen.  It didn’t seem to be doing anything.  I wasn’t sure what was wrong so I decided to grab one of the other pens and it wasn’t working.  It was dried out but it took me a minute to realize that as I tried to force the color onto the page.  Then I tried to blend again and it was just making a bigger mess.  After I realized the second pen was dry I checked the blender and realized it was dry too so off to Google I go.

I watched a couple videos and read a couple articles and learned that this is often fixable by adding denatured alcohol to the pens.  One trip to the drugstore later and I was adding the alcohol to the pens, shaking them furiously, and then waiting for a few minutes for the alcohol to do it’s thing.  Much to my amazement it actually worked.  It totally brought the pens back to life.

Once the pens were all working I tried again but it still took me a while to get the hang of blending.  Unlike watercolor pencils you can’t pull the color away and out into uncolored areas.  I found if I put down a lighter color and then layered a second color up to it the blender worked well to blend the hard edge of the darker into the other color, giving it a blended together look.  Pulling the color away did not pull enough color from the ink to create a nice gradient.

So much mess…

Something else I didn’t count on was the bleed through.  Unlike some of my other pens the Prima Pens bleed through the paper significantly.  Fortunately my desktop where I was coloring is easy to clean off but if I’d been trying this out on a table I would have been sad.  It made a huge mess that I didn’t even realize until I picked up the paper.  Next time I’ll use one of my crafting mats.

I’m glad I learned how to fix the Prima Pens, even though it was super frustrating that they were dried up initially.  I also learned that I should never assume one medium will be like another.  And watching a couple of videos first is a good idea.   I’m tossing the coloring page in the trash bin. I can always print out another copy.  Maybe on heavier paper.