It’s no secret that I love my pencils and my favorite pencils are my Prismacolors but I do use other brands as well. Here are my favorite tips for using colored pencils on your coloring pages and in your coloring books.
- Less is more – If you want to build depth and dimension to your picture use a number of light layers rather than a heavy layer
- Keep your tools clean – If using wax-based pencils make sure you regularly “clean” your pencil sharpener by sharpening a lead pencil
- Adjusting pressure – If you want to reduce the pressure on your pencil but find it hard to do, just move your hand further up the pencil, away from the point
- Avoid smudging of pencil dust – Use a computer vacuum, air duster, feather, or soft make up brush to brush pencil dust from your page and avoid smudging
- Avoid indentations – Use a backing between pages of the coloring book to avoid indentations on the page. I use a laminated piece of paper
- Avoid hand smudging – Use a piece of glassine, laminated paper, baking paper, or piece of plastic (like a phone screen cover) to rest your hand on when coloring to avoid smudging with your hand
- Blend easily – Use a Tombow blender pen or Derwent alcohol blender to quickly blend with little strain on your hands if you have a hand injury (always test for bleed through on an ancillary page in your book)
- Use a hard pencil base – If you want to build a lot of layers but want to avoid a waxy build-up, use cheap Crayola pencils as your base layer then color over
- Use non-colored pencil base layers – If you want to build layers quickly use a watercolor, Inktense, marker, pastel, or highlighter base and then color over with pencils
- Keep the point for longer – To avoid wear on your pencil and ensure your point is sharp for long periods, turn the pencil as you color to ensure even wearing on the tip
Bonus Tip
Effects with pencils can easily be created by using them in different ways like scumbling, hatching, or inserting a textured material under the paper and coloring over. Experiment on scrap paper to try and find new techniques and looks.
I hope that you found some of these tips useful.
Happy coloring x
Lea
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