Basic Coloured Pencil Strokes and Control

By Carol Leather

Strokes are the foundation that nobody quite teaches properly. People reach for a coloured pencil expecting it to behave like a writing pen, then wonder why the colour goes patchy or muddy or refuses to layer.

The shape of the marks you make, and the pressure behind them, controls everything that follows. Once you have a handful of stroke types under your hand and a feel for what changes when you press lighter or harder, you can build any other technique on top of that foundation.

This page covers the small set of basics worth practising properly: the way you hold the pencil, the pressure you use, the difference a sharp point makes, and the two stroke families that do most of the heavy lifting (hatching and circular scumbling).

Gaining Control: Sharpness, Grip, and Pressure

Does pencil sharpness really matter?

Yes, it changes everything about the mark you can make. A sharp point gets pigment down into the deeper valleys of the paper's tooth and gives you the crisp edges fine detail needs.

Fur, feathers, tiny highlights, the edges of leaves: all the small precise work depends on a sharp point. I keep a helical sharpener within reach when I am working on details like animal eyes or whiskers, and I sharpen often.

A slightly duller tip does the opposite, and that is useful too. Where the sharp point digs in, a blunt point skims, laying colour broadly and softly across the surface of the tooth. This is what you want for early layers, soft gradients, distant backgrounds, anywhere you do not want a sharply defined mark.

Holding your pencil

How you hold the pencil matters more than most people expect. Holding it close to the tip, the way you hold a writing pen, gives you the precise control fine work needs.

Holding it further back, more slanted in an underhand grip, naturally encourages lighter pressure and broader strokes, which is the right approach for putting down initial layers.

Experiment with both. Different jobs want different grips, and you will quickly find which feels right for each.

Finding your pressure sweet spot

Pressure is the single most important variable in coloured pencil work, especially once you start layering.

Light pressure should be your default for early layers, almost always. A light touch leaves the paper's tooth open so you can add more layers on top. It also creates translucent colour, which is what makes optical mixing work, the trick where two layered colours blend in the viewer's eye rather than on the page.

Medium pressure comes in once you have a few layers down and you want to build colour more solidly, or pull out a sharper area within a softer surrounding.

Heavy pressure is reserved for the final stages: burnishing the surface to a polish, or pushing the very darkest accents into the picture. Pressing hard early flattens the paper's tooth and shuts the door on any further layering, which is one of the most common reasons drawings get stuck.

Essential Stroke Techniques

With control over your pencil's point and pressure in place, here are the two stroke families that do most of the work.

Hatching and cross-hatching

In hatching you build texture using parallel strokes, all going in one direction.

Cross-hatching adds a second layer of strokes in the opposite or diagonal direction, deepening shadow where the lines overlap. The technique gives drawings a lively, woven feel, almost like threads of colour stitched across the page.

You are not limited to straight lines. Try horizontal, vertical, diagonal, or gently curved strokes, and notice how each one changes the feeling of the drawing.

Ann Kullberg, in her book Texture in Colored Pencil, often used vertical hatching for delicate surface texture, especially in her early work.

When cross-hatching, your second set of strokes can criss-cross at right angles or slant in at a gentler angle. Both are useful. The right answer depends on the texture you are after.

Packing your strokes close together darkens the area; wider gaps let more of the paper show through and create a lighter, airier feel. Keep your pencil tip sharp throughout, especially when you are layering several directions, otherwise the lines start to blur into each other.

Colour mixing through hatching is one of the joys of the technique. In the example below I started with Lyra Olive Green, added True Blue over it, and softened the centre with a final layer of Light Grey. The colours work together without turning to mud.

Cross-hatching is one of those deceptively simple techniques that improves the more you do it. At first your lines might look as if a startled spider has scurried across the page, which is perfectly normal.

Start small. Draw a cube or a simple sphere, build up tone with lines in just one direction, then layer a second direction, then add a colour. Little by little you build a feel for how angles, spacing and pressure interact.

Every artist's cross-hatching has its own rhythm. Yours will too. The wonky lines are often more charming than the careful ones.

Scumbling

If hatching is neat handwriting, scumbling is small, circular, overlapping strokes, like doodling while you are on hold during a phone call, except this time you are doing it with intent.

It is wonderfully forgiving and especially good for soft textures, gentle shading, and layering colour in a way that feels organic and free.

Start with light pressure and make small, continuous loops. The loops do not need to be perfect circles. Think of them more as meandering paths that overlap and fill the space gradually. Vary the size as you go: tight spirals for detail, looser circles for broader areas. Let them overlap generously to build a textured, almost velvety surface.

Scumbling is at its best on natural textures, anywhere you do not want hard lines or obvious patterns. Distant foliage, background grass, pottery, soft shadows, out-of-focus areas, all sit easily under a scumbled layer.

Once you have a base layer down, you can build more colours on top. Try a deeper tone in the shadowed areas, or a complementary colour for visual richness. Keep the motion loose and the pressure gentle at first, since you can always darken later but you cannot easily lighten what is already heavily worked in.

Mix colours freely as you scumble. Layering different hues produces subtle, luminous effects that are hard to get any other way. A white pencil scumbled over a coloured base softens the marks while preserving the texture, which is useful when an area is starting to look too busy.

Building Your Foundation

None of this lands the first time you try it. Or the second. The point is to keep the basics alive: a few minutes of practice every day or two will move you forward faster than a long session every fortnight. Get comfortable with light pressure. Spend time noticing how hatching and scumbling each feel in your hand.

Every artist develops their own handwriting with these strokes. Yours will too. Once you trust your control over the basics, you are ready to build on top of them, which is what layering coloured pencils is about: putting these strokes to work to build depth, colour and form on the page.

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