This is the pencils I have laid down for my next watercolor piece. You can see here that I’ve actually stretched the paper this time (we’ll see how well it works once I start painting on it, though).
I’ve found that the best medium for this stage is the .5mm mechanical pencil I’ve loaded with 4H lead. That is about three steps harder of a graphite than your standard pencil. It works better because 1) much, much less smearing, which is something I’ve always struggled with (right-handed person who always manages to start on the right-hand side of a composition). And 2), the graphite isn’t nearly as dark or heavy, which is the effect I want when I’m going to paint on top of it. It’s very good for lightly sketching; you just have to be careful not to press too hard because the pencil is much more prone to indenting the paper, which will definitely be noticeable.
The next step here is to do some color tests on another sheet of paper. I may try out the water brush I picked up and see if it’s better at the detail work.
Little Pebbles 
Oh, how lovely! I look forward to hearing about how well the stretching works. What kind of waterbrush are you planning on using? I use a Pentel Aquash mainly because it’s the first one I picked up and I’m too lazy to try different ones. :p (Also, at my level of skill, I’m not sure it makes a difference, haha.)
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The stretching seems to be working quite well in terms of keeping the paper flat! I am getting a weird pebbly texture with certain pigments that may be due to the paper particles loosened by the process, but it mostly fades as it dries. I may need to vary the pressure I use with the sponge while I’m stretching to avoid this in the future.
I also picked up a Pentel Aquash (fine point), but I think I’m using it wrong and can’t for the life of me figure out how to do it properly. @__@ I may need to go hunt down some tutorials.
I will post a first WIP later today…I hope I haven’t managed to fudge it all up while I was working on it since then! The color palette is…tricky. I think I need to rein it in a bit as I go.
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