With your materials to hand, learn basic techniques and colour mixing with Helen Carter

There are many ways to add colour to the page. A heavy scribble and a feathery-light wash of colour both have their place, but here are a few techniques, and some tips that will help you begin. 

How to hold your pencil

Scumbling

Hatching

Smoothing

Layering

Colour mixing

Indenting/embossing

How to hold your pencil

How you hold your pencil is important. If you are trying for a light layer of colour, try holding the pencil further back and use the edge of the nib. This low angle prevents you pressing down too hard. To prevent your nib from breaking, especially with harder pressure, try holding the pencil more upright, and lower down. This will give you more control too.

Hard pressure; Hold the pencil near the tip and almost upright

Medium pressure; Hold the pencil comfortably at around a 45% angle

Underhand hold; Hold the pencil further back with your hand above

Lightest pressure; Hold the pencil far back and at a low angle

If you're new to drawing, don't stop here! Explore our other beginner-friendly guides to learn all you need to progress and develop your drawing skills.

Scumbling

For applying even layers of colour, one of the most consistent methods is to use tiny overlapping ovals or circles that layer over and over themselves. This is called scumbling (or ovalling). Apply the colour with light pressure at first then build to medium pressure as you continue to circle over where you’ve been, filling the gaps and covering the paper. It is worth practising this technique because it will help with the blending and mixing of colours too.

Scumbling (or ovalling); Colour with tiny overlapping circular motions for even coverage

Hatching

Hatching and crosshatching is a looser and swifter method to suggest colour, form and shading. Hatching relies on short lines that all go in one direction, while crosshatching needs you to layer the hatching in different directions, building the amount of colour on the page, and thus filling the space, covering the paper, and creating more depth. 
With both these techniques, the closer together you put the lines, the more solid the colour becomes. It can be effective to use both crosshatching and scumbling together. 

Hatching and crosshatching; Shade with individual lines in one direction, or many

Smoothing

Smoothing (or smooshing) is an inter-layer, often done with a white or light-coloured pencil using the scumbling technique (above) to gently squash layers together and smoothing out the visual appearance. It can be very effective on more textured surfaces.

Layering

The mixing of colours is done dry, using different  single-colour layers, right on your drawing. Because  coloured pencils are slightly transparent, any colours you  layer together can be seen through the layers above it,  thus subtly changing whatever colour is on top. 

Light pressure at the bottom (base) layer to heavier pressure on the top layers

Colour mixing

You might already know that there are three primary colours. Traditionally these are red, blue and yellow, but more recently magenta, cyan and yellow (like printer ink) are considered better primaries. Whichever, when all three are mixed equally together, you make brown. Some artists call this ‘mud’. 
Mixing colours is all about using the right proportions, and while you could just use the primaries to create hundreds of colours, it is so much simpler to pick a pencil from the box that’s close to the colour you want and adjust it on the page by layering over with other colours. This takes time and patience, and is a key reason why a thicker paper, with a lot of tooth, is so helpful.

Colour mixing; Make your own colours by layering two or more colours together

Gradients; Seemly transition to another colour by overlapping the edges

Indenting/embossing

Indenting is a technique for creating small or thin highlights within a coloured area that would be difficult not to cover. A tool, such as a ball stylus, or even a sharp white pencil, pressed into the paper will make an indentation that the pencils can’t get into. They will skip over it when you are colouring around it. Any pointy object will work, just make sure it’s not sharp enough to cut or tear the page.

Colour over the indentations to reveal the marks

Press the embossing tool into the paper to create indented lines and marks

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