watercolor + pencil question

When I draw out my watercolor beforehand, very lightly in pencil, I can't erase the pencil fully after I've painted over it. Which I guess makes sense since the paint is now over it, but is there any way to get around that? maybe using invisible ink?

I mean I suppose I could draw it all out and then erase it and rely on my short-term memory... ?

The simplest way to go about it is draw very very lightly so that even when the graphite pokes through its hard to notice. Otherwise I'm not sure how else to do it.

Coming from someone who knows very little about traditional art, you might try to draw on another sheet, and lay the sheet for painting on top, using a lightbox if needed.

From the other direction, if you drew and scanned a design and had access to a projector, you could project the image onto the surface for painting.

If this is dumb, I'm sorry, I'm just a Photographer, after all.

huh!! i really like those suggestions!

You can always use light colour watercolourpencil to draw the picture and then paint all the areas lightly first so you don't loose the picture when the watercolourpencil mixes with watercolours. The other way around is to emphasize the lines so that they become part of your picture. The oldest way is to start painting without sketching, using light colours first. Try to learn how to sketch with watercolours, it's suprisingly fun .

I'd say either use watercolor pencils or do what I usually do- use ink pens as bold outlines and then erase the pencil. Well, that's just my style. You can use either black or a color to outline. I'm just really into the Art Nouveau style, even though it often turns out looking like anime. >< If not, I agree with Forem. It's best to use light colors that you plan to have in your composition, like a light blue, yellow, or tan.

If you do it in pencil and go over it in colored pencil (the colored pencil being the color of watercolor you want to put over it) I find that the pencil will just blend away, then. Like when you go over your light pencil lines with colored pencil, you can then erase and your light colored pencil lines will remain but your pencil lead will disappear. That's what I tried once a long time ago but it was a bit time consuming... Sorry