Making Their Mark - Colour Pencils

Coloured Pencils

Coloured pencils are an inexpensive, convenient and mess-free medium so they're often used for children's art making. But with a bit of practice and some patience, it's possible to create sophisticated and high quality artworks with coloured pencils.

What are they made of?

The core of a coloured pencil is usually made from ground pigment, some wax or oil, a binder and various additives to give it properties such as colourfastness and strength. As with any medium, the quality is reflected in the price. That's because pigments are generally the most expensive ingredient, so cheaper pencils contain lower grade pigments and more fillers, and the resulting mark is therefore not as richly pigmented or blendable. Watercolour pencils

You can also buy pencils in water-soluble form - known as watercolour pencils or aquarelle. With these, you can go over your drawing with a damp paint brush afterwards. This helps to blend and intensify the colours. They can be used very effectively together with watercolour paint and are well worth a try!

Pastel Pencils

Soft pastels can come in pencil form, allowing you to achieve finer detail in your pastel drawings. In this case, the binder is gum with a chalk filler. You'll find more information on these in the Pastels Fact Sheet.

Layering

In order to increase the depth of tone (the darkness or intensity of a colour), it is a good idea to add several layers on top of each other. This is more effective than pressing hard, as heavy pressure will result in lines that are difficult to smooth out, and very difficult to erase if you decide to change your drawing later on. You can also layer up different colours on top of each other, and either leave the colours to optically mix or blend them together to physically mix. As with pastels, it's a good idea to work from light to dark, putting white or light colours down first and then adding other colours on top.

Blending & Burnishing

You can blend using a paper stump, a solvent & brush, or a blending pencil, which has a colourless core. Blending helps you mix different colours together on the page or blend a gradient to make it smoothly transition from several layers of intense colour to a thin, transparent layer where the paper is showing through. You can also blend the transition between two colours. Blending will really give a sophisticated look to your coloured pencil drawings, but be careful not to do it too soon or you risk pushing the colour deep into the paper and make it difficult to rub out if you realise you want to change something.

Burnishing involves rubbing the surface of your finished drawing in order to polish it. You can do this with a tissue or a burnisher pencil, but it's entirely optional!

Useful equipment

Burnishing involves rubbing the surface of your finished drawing in order to polish it. You can do this with a tissue or a burnisher pencil, but it's entirely optional! It's worth investing in a good quality set of pencils, with at least 24 colours in to enable you to create hundreds of different colours by blending them together. We love Derwent Coloursoft pencils, but there are many other good quality brands available such as Faber Castell and Caran d'Ache. It's worth buying a blender pencil for precise blending, but only buy a burnisher if you want a sheen to your finished work. A precision craft knife is useful for scratching out fine details such as fur and hair. The best eraser to use is either a plastic one or an electric one. And a soft brush is useful for removing the 'crumbs' of pencil from your paper.

Top Tip! Test each pencil in your sketchbook to check the colour. The colour name and the colour of the barrel can be misleading.