I'd been playing around with my colored pencils for quite some time now. One time, I tried soaking my Faber Castell Classic colored pencils in water (with a few drops of alcohol) just to see how it would affect saturation. The results were as expected, but surprising still. 

Another time, I tried playing around with Vaseline petroleum jelly. I heard it works well if you wanted more pigment and saturation, and works incredibly if you wanted good blending of colors. Perhaps I did things wrong, because the results weren't as expected. (I was kinda disappointed, to be honest.)

I tried the colored pencil + petroleum jelly drawing again, with different methods this time, and gods, I loved it! I wasn't able to do a process post for that one, so today, I drew again following the same methods

Kaya Scodelario is definitely one of my girl crushes, next to Emma Watson and Emma Stone. Yesterday, I got to watch Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, where she starred. It was a mix of good adventure and funny, and I got the sudden urge to draw Kaya. 

Warning: the drawing ended up not looking like Kaya Scodelario. Hence, this post's title. LOL. But hey, I tried, OK? 

To give you an idea of what's going on (why I tried colored pencils + petroleum jelly), below is a picture comparing a bare colored pencil  against colored pencil with petroleum jelly.

As you can see, by coating the tip of the colored pencil with petroleum jelly, the color becomes more pigmented and saturated, and the valleys in the paper (white gaps) are very easily covered.

Don't get me started with the blending. It was awesome! I can finally say that I really did the process wrong the first time, thus the disappointing results. 

Base sketch.
I began by drawing the base sketch. I learned over the course of trying to figure out colored pencils that it is best to start with an accurate sketch of what you'd like to draw. Doing so would lead to accurate coloring, too.

I guess I messed this up. Even with the base sketch, I couldn't see Kaya Scodelario. HAHAHA.

Base colors.
I always do this with digital, but I never really gave it much of a thought when doing traditional. Here, I laid out the base colors with bare colored pencils. 

Coloring with the petroleum jelly.

With a paper towel at hand, I dipped my colored pencils to petroleum jelly, slightly removed excessive jelly off the pencils' tips, and colored the way I always did. Lo and behold, the results were what I wanted. 

The colors were saturated. There were less white gaps and I didn't need to put hundreds of layers upon hundreds of layers just to cover these white valleys up. The blending was good enough, especially when using the white colored pencil.

I almost always begin with the eyes (like I did in this drawing) before following up the rest of the face. I always liked to add more volume to it by adding more shades of brown and black. The hair is always my last stop, as it is the part that I hated and do least well. 

Finally, I layer the whole drawing with either white or grey, whichever works best on a certain area, just to blend the colors more fully.

I enjoyed drawing this.

It wasn't just drawing, after all. It was trying so hard to get something to work (i.e. colored pencils + petroleum jelly method). It was something I would like to do again, given time. Unfortunately, I am with a lot on my plate right now, and the best I can do with Steemit is reading through people's posts. 

Would you like to try it, too?

If yes, then please, do so! And share it with us here on Steemit. Rest assured that it is a fun activity, plus cheap, too. All you'll need are:

• student-grade colored pencils
• petroleum jelly
• rag or paper towel