Mixed Media with Coloured Pencil

By Carol Leather

Mixed media is what happens when you reach for something other than just your coloured pencils. A wash of watercolour pencil under a landscape to cover the sky in one go. Pan pastel to lay down a soft background fast. A line of ink to anchor a sketchy harbour scene. Each combination solves a problem that dry coloured pencil alone makes harder than it needs to be.

You probably arrived here because something in your work isn't quite landing. A sky that won't cover smoothly. A foliage area you don't want to render leaf by leaf. A background that needs to be there but shouldn't compete with the subject. Mixed media is rarely about replacing your coloured pencils. It's about adding a layer underneath, or behind, or alongside, that does the work coloured pencil isn't best for.

Below you'll find six ways to combine coloured pencil with another medium. Each one has a short overview of when to use it, with links to the deeper tutorials where they exist. There's also an honest section on when not to use mixed media (some competitions only accept 100% dry coloured pencil work, for instance), and the four mistakes most people make on their first combined piece.

Is Mixed Media Right for You Right Now?

Try mixed media if you want to:

• Cover atmospheric backgrounds without overworking the paper.
• Speed up large areas like skies and distant landscapes.
• Achieve effects coloured pencil alone can't easily produce (soft washes, bold textures).
• Solve a specific technical challenge such as drawing on black paper or creating convincing glass.
• Build vibrant underpaintings that let your coloured pencil layers sit on a richer base.

Stick with pure coloured pencil if you:

• Are still building confidence with basic layering and blending.
• Prefer the predictability of working with one medium at a time.
• Are preparing work for a competition that only accepts 100% dry coloured pencil.

Either way, you'll be fine. The point isn't to use mixed media for its own sake. It's to use the right tool for each part of the picture.

Six Ways to Combine Coloured Pencil

In rough order of how accessible each combination is for someone coming from dry coloured pencil work.

With Watercolour Pencils

The most accessible mixed-media starting point. Watercolour pencils look and feel like ordinary coloured pencils, so you don't have to learn a whole new medium from scratch. You can use them entirely dry, entirely wet, or as a wet underpainting that you then refine with dry coloured pencil on top.

The big practical advantage: Faber-Castell (Polychromos with Albrecht Dürer) and Caran d'Ache (Pablo with Supracolor) use the same pigments across their dry and watercolour pencil ranges. That means seamless colour matching between the wet foundation and the dry detail layers. It's the closest you can get to two pencils in one.

For background washes, technique guides and brushes, see the dedicated watercolour pencils hub. For full projects showing how this combination handles a finished scene, two longer tutorials:

With Pastels and PanPastels

Pastels combine well with coloured pencil because their soft, painterly coverage handles broad areas while coloured pencil's precision handles the detail. PanPastels (the round 'pans' you apply with sponges) are especially good for large smooth areas that would take a long time with stick pastel or pencil.

Pastel is dusty. Strategic use of a fixative between layers helps the next layer grip, and lets you keep working without smudging what's underneath. Two deeper technique guides:

• Blending pastels and coloured pencils: how to layer sharp pencil details over a soft pastel base without going muddy.
• Using PanPastels with coloured pencil: practical guide to the pans for smooth, broad areas of colour.

And two full projects to work through:

For background on pastel pencils themselves, the pastel pencils hub covers brands, paper, sharpening and the four common mistakes.

With Ink

Ink and coloured pencil suits sketchy, illustration-style work and outdoor sketching especially well. The ink line provides crisp structure; the coloured pencil softens and colours the spaces between. Three ways to approach the combination:

• Traditional line and wash: permanent ink for the outline, then coloured pencil "washes" worked over the top.
• Selective line softening: water-soluble ink that can be softened with a wet brush for varied effects.
• Outdoor sketching: quick ink lines to establish composition on location, then coloured pencil colour added later in the studio.

Choose hot-pressed watercolour paper rather than cartridge. The smooth, sized surface lets you lift, correct and blend ink lines if you need to, which cartridge paper won't allow.

Peter's Welsh cottage scene, shown here at two stages of development:

For a more ink-heavy approach, here's a German city gate piece at three stages of completion. The ink wash carries the out-of-focus background; coloured pencil comes in only to sharpen the foreground:

With Acrylics

Acrylic gives you a fully opaque, flat base, or a textured ground that coloured pencil sits on cleanly. Two practical things to know first.

Acrylic paint is usually glossy when dry. Too polished for pencil to grip. Either use matte-finish acrylics, mix in a matte medium, or switch to acrylic gouache (Turner and Procolour are reliable brands) which dries permanent and matte.

Acrylic also dries very fast. That's a feature for quick re-layering, and a problem if you leave a brush sitting in colour. Keep brushes moist as you work.

For surface: heavyweight hot-pressed watercolour paper or prepared boards. Standard acrylic canvas is too rough for detailed pencil work on top.

For a sanded, matte ground you can buy ready-made, look at Art Spectrum's Colourfix Primer. It tints in different colours, gives a hard sanded surface ideal for coloured pencil, and is acrylic-based.

With Gouache

Gouache is opaque and matte. It dries to a slightly textured surface that suits coloured pencil work better than glossy acrylic does. Two things to watch:

• Gouache reactivates with water. If the layer underneath isn't fully dry and you lay something darker on top, the bottom layer can bleed up. Let each layer dry completely before the next goes down.
• Designer gouache (the cheaper artist range) often has poor lightfastness. That's fine if it'll be covered by coloured pencil. Worth knowing if any of the gouache stays visible in your finished piece.

With Graphite

Graphite under coloured pencil works for initial sketches and subtle tonal underpainting. The catch: standard HB graphite smudges under coloured pencil layers and lifts into the colour above.

Use hard graphite (2H or harder) for any line work you want to keep visible. The thin, hard line contrasts cleanly with soft coloured pencil shading on top.

For a more interesting variant, look at Derwent Graphitint: water-soluble graphite with subtle colour pigments built in. Useful when you want graphite's tonal foundation but with a hint of colour underneath. The drawing pencils guide covers graphite in more depth.

Four Common Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

The four I see most often on a first combined piece.

Supplies Named on This Page

A short list of the brands and products mentioned above:

• Watercolour pencil for underpaintings: Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer or Caran d'Ache Supracolor Soft. Singles or sets from Jackson's, Cult Pens or Amazon UK.
• Pastel underlayers: PanPastels (starter sets), or Unison Colour soft pastels.
• Drawing inks: Winsor & Newton, Waterman, or Dr. Ph. Martin's for fine-art work. Jackson's Art stocks all three.
• Matte ground for acrylic + pencil: Art Spectrum Colourfix Primer.
• Fixative for mixed pieces: Winsor & Newton Professional Fixative. Always check it's compatible with every medium in your piece before spraying.

If you want a clear next step, pick the section above that addresses something specific in your own work that isn't going well. Try the combination on a small study (around 6 by 8 inches) before you commit it to a finished piece. The point of mixed media is to make certain effects easier, not to use multiple media for the sake of it.