Black Paper for Coloured Pencils: Four Papers Tested

By Carol Leather

Black paper does something white paper cannot. It hands you the shadows before you start, so the only thing left to build is the light. That is why a drawing on black can look lit from inside.

The catch is that not every black behaves. Some blacks drink pigment and give nothing back. Some are so smooth that a third layer just slides. And some are not really black at all after a summer near a window.

This page is what four papers did under the same pencils, plus what to expect from a fifth I have not tested. If you want the technique rather than the materials, the step by step for coloured pencil on black paper has a full demonstration.

Does black paper fade?

This is the question worth settling before you spend anything, because it is the one that cannot be fixed later. Your pencil work might be perfectly lightfast. If the paper underneath it lifts by two values, every highlight you built loses its punch.

Peter Weatherill's test is the simplest one I know, and you can start it today.

Craft and scrapbook blacks are the usual culprits. They are dyed rather than pigmented, and dye is what fades. The four papers below are all archival, which is most of why they cost what they do.

The four papers

This is the comparison worth having, and it is the one most reviews skip. Everything else on this page is one paper at a time. Here the pencil, the pressure and the layer count are all held still, so the only thing changing is what is underneath.

The thing that surprised me was how different the four felt under the hand, not just how they looked. Two of them took the pigment as though the paper wanted it. One of them fought me for five layers and never gave in.

Fabriano Black Black

The name is not a typo. Fabriano called it Black Black because the sheet is darker than most papers sold as black, and side by side with three others it plainly is.

That matters more than it sounds. The darker the ground, the further your lightest whites can travel before they run out of contrast, so a denser black gives you more range to work in without doing anything differently.

It also feels right under the pencil, which I did not expect to matter as much as it does. The pigment goes down without effort and each layer sits on the last instead of skidding over it.

My white pencil brand test further down was swatched on this paper, and so was the pears still life below. It was an early attempt and it shows, but the paper is not what let it down.

Legion Stonehenge, black

This is the one I have used most, and the strip test made me think about it again.

It feels lovely under the pencil. Nothing here is nicer to draw on. But it is the lightest black of the four by a clear margin, and when I laid the same five layers on all of them, the contrast on the Stonehenge was simply not there next to the Fabriano.

The zebra below is on it, and I still like the drawing. Knowing what I know now, I would be curious to see the same subject on the Fabriano.

Peter used the same paper for his course studies, including the colour chart further down this page and the Crabapple Tea study, which is why so much of the work on this site sits on it.

Stonehenge Aqua Coldpress, black

The grain is the whole story here. On a smooth paper a white pencil lays a clean flat area. On Aqua it skips across the tooth and leaves the low points black, which is either a texture you wanted or a problem you have to solve. More on that below.

Strathmore Artagain, coal black

I will be blunt about this one, because a page full of papers that are all somehow fine is no use to anybody.

The surface is hard, and it did not want the Chromaflow pigment. On the very first of the five layers the pencil was skidding across it rather than laying anything down, and it never improved. By the fifth layer my arm was aching, and I was working lightly throughout. That is not effort going into the drawing. That is effort going into the paper.

Compare that with the two middle papers in the strip, where the pencil sank in gently and each layer built on the last without my having to lean on it.

In fairness, it is large, cheap and half the weight of the others, so if you want something to fill with practice marks it will do that. I would rather spend a little more and enjoy it.

And one I have not tested: Canson Mi-Teintes

Mi-Teintes comes up constantly in this conversation, so it would be odd not to mention it. It has two very different sides, one of them a pronounced honeycomb texture, and it is the cheapest of the papers people recommend for this.

I do not own a black sheet of it, so I am not going to review it. When I do, this section will say what it did.

Which coloured pencils work best on black paper?

Peter charted eight brands on a single sheet of black Stonehenge, one to five layers of each colour, light pressure building to full coverage. The brands were Pablo, Supracolor, Polychromos, Prismacolor, Coloursoft, Luminance, Lyra Polycolor and Albrecht Dürer.

His conclusion was that the differences were smaller than expected, but three things separated them.

Peter worked his demonstration mainly in Pablo, borrowing a few Polychromos for their better reds. Pablo does greens, Polychromos does reds, and there is no rule against owning both.

Which white pencil shows up best on black paper?

This surprised me. I expected the colour brands to separate and the whites to be much of a muchness. It is the other way round.

I swatched ten whites on Fabriano Black Black: Derwent Drawing, Chromaflow, three Derwent Lightfast whites (Arctic, Oyster and White), Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle, Polychromos, Prismacolor, Supracolor II and Luminance.

If you have ever wondered why your white looks grey, this is usually the answer, and it is not your pressure. A hard, waxy white on an absorbent black will stay grey no matter what you do to it.

There is a whole family of near-whites worth knowing too. Derwent Drawing's range of pale greys and warm neutrals gives you Chinese White, Oyster, Arctic, Fossil Grey, Taupe, Granite, Cool Grey, Warm Grey, Carbon Grey, Platinum and Mist. On black those read as a set of usable light values rather than as greys.

Peter rates one more that is not in either chart. He picked up a Stabilo 'ALL' white pencil (8052) from his sundries pot to compare against a new brand, and it beat most of the whites he had tried. It is sold as aquarellable and marked for paper, glass, plastic and metal, so it is not an art-shop pencil at all. Worth grabbing if you see one.

What surface texture does to your whites

The two Stonehenge sheets make this visible. On the smooth printmaking sheet, white lays down as a flat clean area. On the cold pressed Aqua, the pencil rides the high points of the grain and leaves the low points black, so a solid white becomes a speckle.

Peter hit exactly this on a Venice scene worked on a rougher black. The streetlamp reflections and the light on the footpath came out flecked, and fine railings against them were close to impossible.

His solution was to stop fighting the paper. Block the light areas in with white soft pastel, blend it down into the grain, then work coloured pencil over the top. That gives a base solid enough to draw fine dark lines back into.

It is a genuinely useful trick and it has its own worked example: a cottage doorway built pastel first, coloured pencil second.

Four ways to waste money on black paper

Where to go next