Her Inner Garden: Dreamy Mixed Media Portrait Using Water-Soluble Pastels – Creative Process and Techniques

Hey friends! I’m so excited to share my latest piece with you today – “Her Inner Garden.” This dreamy watercolor-style drawing explores the connection between a woman’s inner world and the delicate beauty of nature.

I created this using Caran d’Ache Neocolor II Aquarelle Water-Soluble Wax Pastels on Winsor & Newton Cold Pressed Watercolor Paper. This was actually my first time trying any kind of watercolor-like technique! It was fun but definitely had its challenges.

My process was pretty simple – I started by outlining just the contours of the woman’s face and the butterfly, deliberately leaving the flowers free-form. Then I colored with the pastels and applied water with a brush to create that flowing watercolor effect. For brushes, I used several sizes of filberts from the Mimic Kolinsky line from Creative Mark. Their softness was absolutely perfect for this technique.

What I loved most about working with these water-soluble pastels was how I could add all sorts of colors in the dry phase and then watch them blend beautifully when they got wet. It was a bit like opening a present – the anticipation and then that wonderful reveal when the water touched the pigment!

The final piece has this dreamy quality that I really love – the way the woman’s profile merges with the flowers around her, how the purple blooms seem to both emerge from and surround her. The transparent layers blend together in a way that makes the boundaries between the woman and nature feel beautifully fluid.

I’m finding that working with mixed media opens up so many possibilities for expressing emotions and concepts that might be harder to capture with just one medium.

Have you tried water-soluble pastels before? I’d love to hear about your experiences!

Products Used in the Drawing