Vice-chair of the UK Coloured Pencil Society, Helen Carter shares her top tips for drawing with coloured pencils.

'I returned to my artistic roots after leaving a long non-art career in Local Government in 2017,' says Helen Carter. 'I have always loved to draw rather than paint, and it was a natural progression for me to move from graphite and charcoal to colour pencils.

'I joined the UK Coloured Pencil Society in 2018 and I have learned so much about this versatile medium from the helpful members there that this year I joined the team and became vice-chair of the society'.

Here are Helen's five top tips for working with colour pencils.

Understand your pressure

Knowing how hard or soft you normally press is useful for understanding how much scope you can have to go lighter or heavier.

If you are fairly new to colour pencils, try doing a pressure test to see where in the range you naturally sit, with 1 being the lightest pressure you can manage, and 10 being the heaviest.

Most colour pencil work is done at level 3 or 4, and slowly gets heavier as you layer.

Burnishing is the heaviest pressure you’ll use, and this will be a 9 or 10.

A glaze would be the lightest at level 1 or 2.

Hold your pencil differently

After the pressure test, if you find that you are working too lightly or like me, too heavy, consider changing the way you hold your colour pencils.

Further up the barrel will help to lighten your pressure.

Closer to the nib will enable you to be heavier.

Hold the pencil further up the barrel to lighten your pressure and create looser marks.

Hold the pencil further down the barrel to increase pressure.

Hold the pencil near the nib for ultimate control and pressure.

Vary your pencil strokes

It is easy to forget sometimes that your colour pencil has sides and edges as well as a point.

You don’t have to apply colour, fill large spaces, or map out your under-layers in the same way you create texture or smooth out your top layers. 

Using the side of your pencil you can fill an area very quickly, and it saves on sharpening.

Angle up to get a thinner line and remember to rotate your grip to keep the point sharp.

Top tip Be careful when working on the side, press too hard and the nib can break!

Blender Pens

There are many types of blending mediums out there for colour pencils, but I love blender pens.

As an artist who prefers pencils and pens to paintbrushes, I find these so useful for smaller areas. They don’t smell anywhere near as bad as odourless mineral spirits or other blending mediums either, which is great.

Blender pens dissolve the binder and smooth out the pigment, covering the tooth quickly. They also make the colour really pop. 

The image on the left shows coloured pencil before and the one below after uisng a blender pen.

Top tip My top tip for using blender pens, or any blender, is to have a generous amount of pigment down first. It doesn’t have to be all that neat, because the pencil strokes disappear.

Smooshing/Smoothing out

If you don’t fancy using a blender, you can achieve a similar effect by using a light colour over the top, such as white or a very light grey. This will smooth out the pigment by squashing the layers together to create a solid colour.

Again, you need a generous amount of pigment down before you do this and you need to press firmly (6 or 7 on the pressure test) to get the best results, so don’t do this too early if you need the tooth. 

Top tip Using light colours, especially white, can desaturate your layers, so my top tip is to add some additional colour over the top just to adjust the tone.

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See more from Helen Carter on her website, www.helencarterartist.com, Facebook and Instagram.

UKCPS

For more information about the UK Coloured Pencil Society please visit www.ukcps.org.uk.