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Understanding Your Coloured Pencils

By Carol Leather

What this covers

What your coloured pencils are actually made of, how that changes the way they handle, and how to keep your finished drawings looking their best. Six short reads: what is inside the core, wax versus oil, lightfastness, testing your own pencils, the cloudy haze called wax bloom, and how to frame and protect the finished drawing.

Nobody really teaches you about the pencils themselves. You learn to draw, you learn to layer and blend, and the box of pencils just sits there as a given. Then one day a drawing you were proud of goes cloudy in the dark areas, or a colour you loved quietly fades on a sunny wall, and you realise you never understood what these things are made of or how they behave.

That was me for a long time. This section is the part I wish someone had explained early: what is inside a coloured pencil, why two pencils that look identical can feel completely different under your hand, and how to make sure the work you put hours into actually lasts. None of it is complicated once it is laid out plainly.

Where to start: If you are choosing pencils or wondering why yours feel scratchy or crumbly, begin with wax versus oil. That single difference explains more than anything else. Lightfastness matters most once you are framing work, giving it away, or selling it.

What your pencils are actually made of

A coloured pencil core is more than coloured stuff in a wooden case. It is pigment, plus clays and gums for strength, fillers to soften the colour, and a binder of either wax or oil. That recipe is what decides how the pencil draws: how it sharpens, how easily it blends, whether the point crumbles, and how many layers you can build before the paper says no. Once you know what is in the core, a lot of the guesswork about why a pencil does or does not work for you simply falls away.

What is inside a coloured pencil

Pigment, clay, filler, wax or oil: here is what is actually packed into the core of a coloured pencil, and why the recipe decides how it draws and what you pay for it.

Wax or oil based: which suits the way you draw

The binder changes how a pencil sharpens, how it blends, and whether it crumbles. Here is how to tell which type you are holding, and which one fits the way you like to work.

Will your drawing still look right years from now?

Lightfastness is the rating that tells you how well a colour resists fading in daylight. It is the thing almost no one mentions when you are starting out, and it matters more than you would think: some genuinely beautiful pencils fade within a year on a bright wall, while others hold true for decades. The good news is that you do not have to take the manufacturer's word for it. You can test your own.

What lightfastness means, and the symbols on the barrel

Stars, Roman numerals, Blue Wool ratings: here is what the lightfastness marks actually tell you, and why two pencils of the same colour can score completely differently.

Test your own pencils on a windowsill

You can prove which of your pencils will last and which will fade, using nothing more than a strip of paper and a sunny window. Here is exactly how to run the test.

When a finished drawing turns cloudy

You finish a piece, set it aside, and a week later a milky film has crept over the darkest, most heavily layered areas. That is wax bloom, and the first time it happens it feels like the drawing is ruined. It is not. It is a normal thing that wax based pencils do when they are built up thickly, it does no harm to the work underneath, and it takes about ten seconds to deal with once you know what it is.

Wax bloom: what it is and how to fix it

The cloudy haze over heavy wax layers explained: why it happens, why your drawing is fine, and the quick fix that brings the colour straight back.

Looking after the finished drawing

Understanding your pencils is half the story. The other half is protecting the work once it is done, so the colours you have built up so carefully stay true for years. A few simple choices about light, glass and storage make all the difference.

Framing and caring for your drawings

Keep your work out of sunlight, frame it the way coloured pencil likes, deal with wax bloom, and store unframed pieces safely.

portrait of the author Carol Leather

I'm Carol Leather, a coloured pencil artist for over 15 years. Most of my teaching comes back to the same idea: realistic coloured pencil starts with structure, light and observation long before the colour goes down.

My work has featured in Ann Kullberg's Color Magazine, CP Magic and Color Pencil Treasures (vol 7). I'm a member of the UKCPS and was a prize winner in the Nature section of their Annual Open Exhibition in 2020.