Faber Castell Gelatos – First Impressions

After binge reading Wilna Furstenberg’s blog and watching countless videos she’s posted online, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase the Gelatos full set.

Before purchasing from Amazon — at the time of purchase, they had by far the cheapest price — I spent two nights deep reading about the “gelatos vs gel sticks” debate. For me, even if the quality is exactly the same, color choice was the determining factor. I use the Peach, Guava, Mango, and Lavender colors all the time and I simply would not have used the primary colors of the gel sticks. After playing with them for a few days, I know I made the right choice. Some swatches of the first row of colors below.

I’m watching many videos to learn how to control the intensity of swaths of color — the traditional watercolor look is easiest to recreate when I use swipe a wet brush against the stick. For more intense color, I swipe the stick directly on the water color paper a few times. Sometimes it blends smoothly but other times, it doesn’t work as well as I want it to.

I also read about using gelatos for stamping and creating both slightly embossed or water color effects. I’ve read that rubber stamps work better than acrylic or clear stamps — I’ve only tested it out on rubber stamps so far. The first example, I spritzed the stamp first then swatched the stick around like messy lipstick. It created a slightly raised impression.

With this stamp, I sprayed the stamp after I colored the rubber surface. Can you tell that this is supposed to a be a macaron? I bought this stamp on a whim when I had a class coupon from Paper Source.

 

Next up — I’m going to test it out on different types of paper.