Media Handling and Technique
Media handling and technique
This domain tests whether you control the chosen medium rather than fight it. Marks should be intentional, edges clean where needed, and the surface should not look muddy or overworked.
Core rules
- Pencil: use H grades for light construction, B grades for darks; vary pressure and sharpness; hatch along form, and avoid greasy smudging.
- Ink: establish line weight-thicker for near contours, finer for distance; use hatching and cross-hatching for tone, and let lines dry before erasing pencil.
- Watercolour: work light to dark, use wet-on-wet for soft atmosphere and wet-on-dry for crisp edges; tilt the board, mix enough puddle, and avoid scrubbing.
- Poster colour: opaque and flat; build midtones first, keep edges crisp, and layer opaque lights over dry darks where needed.
- Pastel: work on toothy paper, layer side-strokes for masses and tips for detail; blend sparingly or the colour turns grey.
- Mixed media: test compatibility; a common order is watercolour base, ink drawing after dry, then opaque highlights.
Worked example
A rainy street in watercolour and ink: lay a pale warm-grey wash for sky, a cooler grey for road, reserve white paper for reflections, let it dry, then draw figures and architecture with a fine pen, thicker in the foreground. Reasoning: the wash supplies atmosphere, the pen restores structure, and reserved paper gives clean lights without opaque paint.
Traps
Muddy watercolour from overmixing, ink that bleeds through wet wash, streaky poster colour from insufficient mixing, pastel overblended to mush, and mixed media applied in an incompatible order. Keep test strips.