Ready to learn basic coloured pencil techniques?

Are you ready to take your coloured pencil techniques from tentative strokes to truly impressive pieces?

Perhaps you've dipped your toes into this medium, maybe coming from paints or graphite, or perhaps you're rediscovering a love for drawing after years away?

Wherever you're starting, you likely share a common goal: to create coloured pencil artwork that feels accomplished, realistic, and genuinely wow-worthy.

I remember feeling that same mix of excitement and frustration when I seriously picked up coloured pencils again on my 50th birthday.

There's a unique magic to them, but the techniques can feel quite different from other mediums. That initial learning curve can be steep, especially when you see stunningly realistic work online and wonder, "How did they do that?".

Don't worry! While coloured pencils demand patience, learning the core techniques is absolutely achievable. I

t’s not about some innate "talent"; it's about understanding how the pencils interact with the paper and learning specific methods to get the effects you want.

In this guide, I'll walk you through the essential coloured pencil techniques I use in my own pet portrait and wildlife art. We’ll break down everything from basic mark-making to achieving those smooth, professional finishes. We'll cover:

Mark Making: The foundation of your control.
Underpainting: Setting the stage for depth and value
Layering: Building rich, nuanced colour
Indenting & Scratching: Adding delicate details and texture.
Blending: Seamless transitions for realism.
Burnishing: Creating smooth, glossy surfaces.
Powdered Pigment: Soft effects and backgrounds.
Erasing: More than just fixing mistakes!

By the end, you'll have a practical toolkit of techniques to experiment with, helping you bridge that frustrating gap between the art you envision and the art you create.

Let's get started!

Understanding Your Pencil Strokes

The very first step is understanding how the simple act of putting pencil to paper influences your final piece.

It sounds basic, but consciously controlling your mark-making is fundamental. Think of it as your pencil's vocabulary – the more 'words' you know, the more expressive you can be.

Does Pencil Sharpness Really Matter?

The sharpness of your pencil point dramatically changes the marks you make:

Sharp Point: Essential for crisp lines, fine details (think fur, feathers, tiny highlights), and intricate textures. A sharp point allows pigment to get into the deeper valleys of the paper's tooth, giving clean edges. I keep a good sharpener handy – often a helical one for a long, sharp point – especially when working on details like animal eyes or whiskers.
Blunt/Rounded Tip: Better for covering broader areas more quickly and softly. A slightly duller tip skims over the paper's tooth, making it ideal for initial layers, soft gradients (like skies or out-of-focus backgrounds), or when you want a less defined texture.

Finding Your Pressure Sweet Spot

How hard you press is perhaps the single most crucial element in coloured pencil technique, especially for layering and realism:

Light Pressure: This should be your default setting for initial layers. Using a light touch allows the paper's tooth to remain open, enabling you to add multiple subsequent layers. It creates translucent colour, perfect for optical mixing (where colours blend in the viewer's eye) and gradual build-up.
Medium Pressure: Used for building up colour more substantially once initial layers are down, or for defining areas more clearly.
Heavy Pressure: Reserved for later stages, primarily for burnishing (which we'll cover later) or for achieving the absolute darkest accents. Pressing hard too early flattens the paper tooth, making further layering difficult or impossible.

Pro-Tip: Practice creating value scales with a single pencil, going from the lightest possible mark to the darkest, just by varying pressure. This exercise is invaluable for developing control.

Different Strokes for Different Folks (and Textures!)

The direction and type of stroke also contribute significantly:

Parallel Lines/Hatching: Lines going in one direction. Useful for smooth areas or suggesting direction (like wood grain).
Cross-Hatching: Layering sets of parallel lines at different angles. Excellent for building value and form, especially in underdrawings or initial layers.
Scumbling/Circular Strokes: Using small, overlapping circular motions. Great for building up even layers of colour without obvious lines, often used for skin tones or smooth surfaces.
Stippling: Creating tone and texture using tiny dots. Time-consuming but effective for certain textures (like sand or rough surfaces).
Directional Strokes: Applying strokes that follow the form of the object (e.g., curved strokes around an apple, short strokes following fur direction). This powerfully enhances the illusion of 3D form.

Experiment with these on scrap paper. You can explore these different coloured pencil strokes in more detail to see how combining different points, pressures, and strokes creates varied effects. This conscious control is your foundation.

Why Underpainting Can Transform Your Drawings

Underpainting might sound like something reserved for oil painters, but it's an incredibly useful technique for coloured pencil artists striving for realism and depth.

Essentially, it involves laying down an initial monochrome or limited-colour layer to establish tones and values before adding the main colours.

What Are the Benefits of Underpainting?

Establishes Values Early: It forces you to think about lights and darks from the start, creating a strong foundation for form. This helps avoid drawings looking flat. I often use shades of grey (like French Greys or cool/warm greys) or a complementary colour (the opposite on the colour wheel) for this.
Adds Depth and Richness: Subsequent colour layers interact with the underpainting, allowing hints of it to peek through. This adds complexity and vibrancy, especially using complementary colours – for example, a light blue underpainting for an orange subject can make the orange pop and create more natural-looking shadows.
Faster Coverage: Blocking in main value shapes with a single colour can be quicker than meticulously layering multiple colours from the outset, especially for larger areas.
Unified Tones: It can help harmonize the overall piece, ensuring consistent shadow tones, for example.

My Personal Approach to Underpainting

I typically use light pressure and hatching or cross-hatching strokes. My goal isn't solid coverage but establishing the map of light and shadow. I might use:

Greys: For a neutral value study, great for complex subjects or portraits.

Complementary Colour: A thin layer of the complement under the main subject colour (e.g., violet under yellow, green under red). This is fantastic for making the main colour more vibrant and adding depth to shadows.

Analogous Cool Colour: Using a light blue or violet for distant elements (like background hills) can help establish atmospheric perspective right away.

Don't be afraid to try it! Even a simple grey underpainting can make a surprising difference to the solidity of your finished piece.

Coloured pencil layering techniques

Layering is arguably the defining technique of coloured pencil art, especially for realism.

Think of it like stacking sheets of coloured glass – each layer adds subtle colour and modifies the layers beneath, creating luminous, complex hues you often can't achieve with a single pencil. This is where patience truly pays off.

Follow These Golden Rules for Layering Success

Start Light: Always begin with very light pressure. This keeps the paper tooth open for subsequent layers. Trying to force colour down heavily early on is the quickest way to muddy results or prevent further work.
Build Gradually: Add colours slowly, layer by layer. Each layer should be light enough to allow previous layers to show through and influence the mix. Aim for maybe 5-10 light layers (or more!) rather than 1-2 heavy ones.
Vary Stroke Direction: Applying subsequent layers in slightly different directions (e.g., diagonal hatching over vertical hatching) helps create smoother coverage and avoids obvious lines.
Use Optical Mixing: Understand that colours mix in the viewer's eye, not physically like paint. Layering a light blue over a light yellow creates the impression of green. This allows for incredibly subtle and realistic colour transitions.

How to Choose Your Layering Colours

Colour Theory is Your Friend: Use your colour wheel! Layering analogous colours (those next to each other) creates smooth transitions. Layering complements dulls colours or creates rich neutrals/darks (use sparingly!)
Look Beyond the Obvious: Don't be afraid to layer unexpected colours. Adding hints of blue or violet into skin tone shadows, or a touch of pink into a green leaf highlight, can add immense realism. Observe your references closely – colours are rarely flat!
Which Goes First Light or Dark?: Generally, working light-to-dark is common, preserving highlights. However, establishing darks early can sometimes help define form, and light colours can be layered over darks (especially with opaque pencils or careful technique), but it requires skill. Experiment to see what works for your style.

My Experience: When I first started, I was impatient and pressed too hard too soon, leading to waxy, flat drawings. Learning to use light layers made all the difference to achieving the realism I wanted in my pet portraits.

Adding Fine Details with Indenting and Scratching

Example of indenting the paper before applying coloured pencil

Want to create delicate white lines like whiskers or highlights on grass without painstakingly drawing around them? Indenting and scratching are clever techniques to add texture and detail.

Use Indenting to Create Invisible Lines

Indenting involves pressing lines into the paper before adding colour. The pencil pigment then skips over these indented grooves, leaving them white.

Tools: Use a stylus, an empty ballpoint pen, a bone folder, or even a hard graphite pencil (like a 4H).

Technique: Place your reference sketch underneath your drawing paper (or draw very lightly). Gently but firmly press your indenting tool along the lines you want to preserve (e.g., whiskers, light veins on leaves, highlights on hair). Be careful not to tear the paper!

Pencil Application: Apply coloured pencil layers gently over the indented area. The pigment will colour the raised paper but not the grooves. Magic!

Need to fix an accidental dent? It happens! Sometimes gentle rubbing from the back with a smooth tool can lessen it, or careful layering might camouflage it.

Read Tom's helpful story about how he removed an accidental dent or scratch here.

Use Scratching to Reveal Layers Beneath

Scratching involves carefully removing pigment after it's been applied to reveal the paper colour or underlying layers.

Tools: A sharp craft knife (use with extreme care!), a specialised scraping tool, or sometimes even a sharpened eraser edge.

Technique: Best used on areas with several layers of pencil. Gently scrape away pigment to create fine lines or textures. Ideal for light hairs over dark fur, highlights on rough textures, or adding sparkle.

Caution: This technique physically removes paper fibres as well as pigment. It's irreversible and works best on sturdy paper. Practice first!

Tips for Both Techniques

Use gentle pressure – too hard and you damage the paper.
These techniques often work best on smoother paper surfaces.
Experiment to find the right tool and pressure for you.

Achieve a Polished Finish Through Burnishing

Burnishing is a technique used in the final stages to create a smooth, glossy, almost painterly finish.

It involves applying heavy pressure with a light-coloured pencil or a colourless blender to meld the layers together, eliminate paper grain, and intensify colours.

You can learn more about how to burnish coloured pencils here.

Know When and How to Burnish Effectively

Typically this is done as one of the last steps, once most layers are applied. Burnishing flattens the paper tooth completely, making further layering very difficult.

You can use:

Light-Coloured Pencil: Using white or a very pale version of the area's colour (like cream or light grey) works well. It blends and slightly lightens.
Colourless Blender Pencil: These are pencils made of wax binder without pigment. They blend layers without altering the colour significantly.

Apply firm, heavy pressure in overlapping strokes (circular or directional) over the area you want to smooth. The heat and pressure fuse the pencil layers.

Discover Where Burnishing Truly Shines

Smooth Surfaces: Excellent for shiny objects like glass, metal, polished fruit, or water reflections.
Intense Colour: It deepens saturation and makes colours richer.
Animal Eyes/Noses: Can add that realistic wet sheen.

Caution: Burnishing seals the paper. Ensure you're happy with the colours and values before burnishing, as significant changes afterwards are hard.

It can also lead to wax bloom with some wax-based pencils if overdone.

Create Seamless Transitions with Blending Tools

Well used paper blending stumps and tortillons

While burnishing blends, other tools offer different blending effects, useful for soft gradients, out-of-focus areas, and seamless colour transitions without heavy pressure.

Working with Paper Blending Stumps and Tortillons

These are tightly rolled paper tools that are invaluable for blending:

Stumps: Dense, pointed at both ends, come in various sizes. Good for larger areas and smooth blends.
Tortillons: Rolled paper pointed at one end, lighter than stumps. Better for smaller areas and more subtle blending.
Technique: After applying pencil layers (ensure enough pigment is down), gently rub the stump or tortillon over the area to smooth and merge the colours. Use a light touch – rubbing too hard can lift pigment unevenly. Clean stumps/tortillons regularly on sandpaper or scrap paper to avoid muddying colours.
You can find more details on using paper blending stumps and tortillons here.

Exploring Other Blending Options

Cotton Swabs/Buds: Can be used for very soft, subtle blending, especially over larger areas. Use lightly, as they can lift pigment.
Felt or Chamois: Peter swears by using small pieces of felt for soft blending.
Solvents: Odourless mineral spirits (use safely in well-ventilated area!) or specialised artist solvents can be applied lightly with a cotton bud or brush to dissolve pencil binder and create painterly blends. Test compatibility with your paper and pencils first.

The key is to have enough pigment layered before blending for the tools to work effectively.

Achieve Soft Effects Using Powdered Pigment

This is a less common but fascinating technique for creating soft, atmospheric effects, almost like pastels.

Technique: Carefully grate coloured pencils (using a fine grater or sanding block) to create a fine powder. Collect the powder.
Application: Use a cotton swab, sponge applicator, or soft brush to gently apply the powdered pigment to your paper. You can build up soft layers this way.
Uses: Excellent for soft, out-of-focus backgrounds, skies, or adding subtle colour tints over existing work. You can see a practical example of using powdered pigment for creating soft, dreamy clouds here.
Fixing: Powdered pigment can smudge easily, so consider using a workable fixative once applied if needed.

It's a fun way to experiment and achieve painterly qualities with your pencils!

Think of Erasers as Creative Tools Too

Don't just think of erasers as mistake-fixers! They are powerful mark-making tools in their own right.

Different Erasers Offer Different Possibilitie

Kneaded Eraser: Soft, pliable eraser that lifts pigment gently without damaging paper. Excellent for lightening areas, creating soft highlights, or dabbing away smudges. You knead it to clean it. My go-to for subtle adjustment.
Vinyl/Plastic Eraser: Harder eraser, good for cleaner, sharper erasing but can damage paper if used too aggressively. Better for erasing initial graphite sketches.
Precision Eraser: Often pen-style with a very small eraser tip (like the Tombow Mono Zero). Fantastic for creating fine highlights (like stray hairs, water sparkle) by erasing thin lines out of layered colour.
Electric Eraser: Battery-operated eraser that can lift pigment effectively for strong highlights, but requires a light touch to avoid damaging paper.

Why You Might Need an Eraser Guard

This thin metal sheet with various small holes and slots is a lifesaver!

Place it over your drawing, exposing only the tiny area you want to erase through a slot. This protects the surrounding area from accidental erasing or smudging – indispensable for detailed work! You can often find these online if not locally.

Experiment with lifting techniques – dabbing, stroking, using different erasers – to see the effects you can create.

Find eraser guards on Amazon (affiliate link) if you have trouble sourcing one locally.

After using these coloured pencil techniques...

Exploring these coloured pencil techniques opens up a world of artistic possibilities, allowing you to move beyond basic colouring and create the detailed and realistic art you aspire to.

From controlling your initial marks to blending the final layers, each step plays a vital role.

Remember, the journey is about practice and experimentation.

Don't be discouraged if techniques feel awkward at first. Every artist starts somewhere – I certainly had my share of frustrating moments learning how layers interact or how much pressure to use.

Be patient with yourself, embrace the process, and celebrate the small victories along the way.

Key Takeaways:

Control your mark-making (point, pressure, stroke) for foundational expression.
Use underpainting to establish values and depth early.
Practice light, gradual layering for rich, complex colour.
Employ indenting/scratching for fine white details and textures.
Use burnishing for a final polished, glossy look on smooth surfaces.
Experiment with blending tools (stumps, tortillons, swabs) for seamless transitions.
Try powdered pigment for soft, atmospheric effects.
Leverage erasers as creative tools for highlights and texture.

Ready to take the next step?

Investigate Layering: Want to see these layering techniques in action, especially for tricky subjects like fur? Check out my detailed cat tutorial
Choose Your Tools Wisely: Confused about which pencils or paper are right for you? Read my guide on choosing paper here.
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Start Practicing: Pick one technique from this guide and dedicate 15 minutes today to experimenting with it on scrap paper. Action is the best way to learn!

I hope this guide empowers you to explore the incredible potential of coloured pencils. Happy drawing!

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