Questions and answers about colored pencil techniques and materials.

Q. I've been buying 2-ply white Rising Museum Board from a certain supplier but have learned that they are not going to carry it anymore. Are there any other suppliers?

A. Rising Museum Board is one of the very best drawing surfaces for colored pencil and is recommended by many teachers including me. Where to buy it now? My source for it is Art Media in Portland, Oregon. They have sold and shipped Rising Museum Board for years. They will also sell it in smaller sizes than the full mat board size. Their toll free number is 1-800-990-3364. Also online from Dick Blick. The URL for the Rising MB page on their site is http://www.dickblick.com/zz130/18/ . And the mail order catalog for Daniel Smith Inc. of Seattle also stocks Rising Museum Board. Their toll free number is: 1-800-426-6740.

Q. How do you create a metallic effect like gold?

A. To successfully render reflective metallic surfaces, extra value contrast (lightness/darkness scale) is usually required--even more than you actually see on the object's surface. And gold is no exception. But making a metallic surface look specifically like gold and not another metal, is determined by color. Value effects reflectivity; color effects metal identity.

I tend to avoid color mixing formulas, but here are some suggestions to help you find your own way to mix a credible gold color:

Green is the surprise ingredient.

To determine the colors necessary for the particular gold you want to express, try to identify the color families you see. Obviously you will find light yellows, yellow-oranges, oranges, and red-oranges. But, in order to make a rich dark value of gold--needed to help the illusion of a reflective metallic surface--you will also need some greens and dark greens.

	In the detail at right, the metallic gold glaze on the vase's lip is made of 916 Canary Yellow, 917 Sunburst Yellow, 918 Orange, 922 Poppy Red, 908 Dark Green, and 909 Grass Green (all Prismacolor pencils).

A. There seems no way to bleach paper without damaging the paper's fibers. Colored papers provide a wonderful surface on which to work although you usually have to resort to using pastel or other media for brilliant white areas. But what's more problematical is that colored paper tends to fade. What I would suggest to address both of these issues is to color white paper with liquid acrylic or watercolor first, but leave your white areas uncovered. In essence you will be making your own colored paper.

Putting a colored imprimatura on your paper also builds an interesting grabby surface for colored pencil--better than many ready-made colored papers--because the new texture is very irregular (especially when using watercolor). And you are completely in control of the color. Not only can you leave whites, you can also develop other attributes such as texture, color changes, gradations.

Use a 100% rag paper or board that you like to work on which will take aqueous media without buckling. And for the liquid acrylic or watercolor, use those that are lightfast.

	In general I would also recommend signing original work within the art piece itself rather than in a margin. Because many people are still not familiar with colored pencil work, signing in a margin might suggest that your work is a print.

Q. Has it been your experience that colored pencil leads frequently break while being sharpened? If so, do you have any special techniques for overcoming this?

A. Colored pencils are often used so intensively and sharpened so frequently, that breakage can really become an issue. Several conditions can cause such breaking. Here are some possible causes and remedies:

1. UNCENTERED LEADS - These will give your hand-held sharpener problems. Try to purchase only leads that are well-centered, and that look good and tight. If you discover some miscreants, then using an electric sharpener may help. You might also complain to the manufacturer when you run into a spate of bad pencils. This could help us all.

2. MISMATCHED WOOD - Leads are usually clenched between twin crescents of cedar. In my experience, if one crescent is light and the other dark (suggesting different wood grains), the pencil's lead may break frequently while sharpening. When you find this kind of "breaker," it's usually a good idea to move to the larger opening of a two-hole sharpener. This will generate a short shaft, removing less wood and being more "forgiving."

3. DULL SHARPENERS - I use small hand-held sharpeners with replaceable blades, and change blades at the start of each new drawing. I frequently hear that it is difficult to find replacement blades. The store or catalog that sold you the sharpener originally, should also carry the blades. But you may have to educate them about this. Before colored pencils became popular, blades weren't much of an issue. And some stores still don't realize their importance.

I personally haven't had much luck in "jigging up" to resharpen these little blades in my studio. If you know how, I think a lot of us would like to hear how you do it. Drop me an email.

4. FRACTURED LEADS IN THE SHAFT DUE TO DROPPING - This means that your sharpening isn't causing the breakage. It just reveals the broken lead. It's impossible to know who is responsible for accidentally fracturing colored pencil leads--shipper, store clerk, manufacturer? But this is another good reason to purchase your pencils from open stock. Buying a badly dropped set of 120 pencils or more could become the stuff of nightmares. Yikes.

Q. I feel about to come to a standstill with my colored pencil art. As a newcomer to this medium, I have begun to love it. But I recently came across an article in which this established colored pencil artist states that one of his colored pencil pieces can take him from 200 to 400 hours to complete. That's about 25 to 50 solid eight-hour days! Is this the kind of time this medium demands?

A. No medium makes demands. Only its users can do this. The simple reality is that all the tools of art can be used in a variety of ways for widely different effects, and to accommodate the personal needs of differently driven artists. Oil painting, for example, can use extremely time-consuming and esoteric glazing methods, or be done swiftly as alla prima. Yet both approaches remain valid painting techniques.

And it is the same with the colored pencil medium. Each of us must find the methods that fit our own lifestyles and temperament, and satisfy our own needs of accomplishment.

Q. What is the best way to store unframed colored pencil drawings? I spray all my drawings with a fixative. Is it harmful to store them in the sheet protectors of a presentation portfolio?

A. One of the best ways to store drawings that are 20" x 24" or smaller is to loosely stack them with acid-free interleaving sheets between them in archival boxes made for this purpose. These boxes can be found in well-stocked photo stores. Some art supply stores and mail order catalogs offer acid-free tissue-like interleaving sheets, but sometimes it is cheaper to buy lightweight acid-free drawing paper instead.

The big flat multi-drawer cabinets also work well, although they are hugely expensive. Archivists frequently recommend the wooden kind. But although metal cabinets are frowned on, I've used one for this purpose for over 20 years with no ill effects of mildew or foxing.

Always keep artwork--stored or framed--in a place that doesn't have wide swings in temperature or humidity. Avoid using silica gel, even though it may seem a good idea, because paper sheets can become dehydrated.

Regarding spraying drawings, and using portfolios for storing work: Avoid spraying unless you expect your drawing to bloom. Spraying a fixative adds only a modicum of protection, and the tradeoff of possible damage to colors is too high a price to pay. Nor is leaving drawings enclosed in the acrylic sheets of some portfolios a good idea. Paper needs to breath and plastic holders don't encourage this. Plus, after awhile, some of the color will probably migrate to the sheeting material.

Q. While drawing with colored pencils, my piece gets very dirty--not just the margins, but also any light areas inside my drawing. I use very hard pressure and this seems to make little pieces of color that leave marks. Is there a way of preventing these constant blemishes?

A. Heavy pressure (and to a lesser extent light pressure) techniques do generate a lot of color flecks that can migrate onto a drawing's surface, spoiling colored and light passages alike. Keeping your drawing board at a near-vertical position helps. Fine pigment particles will tend to fall away, rather than being ground in by your hand or a scratch sheet under it. The biggest help however is keeping a small utility brush nearby, and using it routinely for lightly brushing away pigment particles. My brush shown is a 2" natural bristle brush--the inexpensive kind found in variety and paint stores. It also has a hole in the handle which can be threaded with a neck-cord for working on location..

Q. I've just finished a still life that has a large section of white fabric in it. I used white pencil but wonder if I used too much pressure. It now looks waxy and doesn't mix with colors I wanted to use for shadows. Maybe it's too late for this drawing, but how can I avoid this kind of mess next time I use the white pencil?

A. First off, avoid using white pencil to render white. When you work with any kind of white or very light element, it is best to use just the white of the paper. But not just untouched paper, for that will result in an overly opaque and marshmallowy appearance--unlike other parts of your drawing.

Try this technique for rendering delicate whites: First, apply some side-by-side light to medium tints of several different pencil colors. Because it is difficult to have control with very light-light applications, apply them at a more comfortable and manageable value level.

Then lift away (with kneaded rubber, tape, or frisket film) as much as possible of your applied color. The residue remaining--very light hints of color--is what you are after. These areas can then be shaded where necessary.

Which colors to best use for white passages? I have no formula, but good choices would likely come from other colors in your drawing. I like warm darks and cool lights, but it really depends on the piece you are doing.

Q. I have a craving for working on black. Can colored pencils be used on black paper, and if so are there any special techniques?

A. Yes, colored pencil can be used successfully on black paper, or on other colored papers too. In my books, The Colored Pencil, Revised Edition and Basic Colored Pencil Techniques, there are chapters on using colored surfaces, including black. But here is some immediate information to get you started satisfying that urge:

1. Black paper isn't really black but is actually a dark gray--in any brand. To truly work with a black paper you would have to create your own by using watercolor, or liquid acrylic on a board.

If you opt to use manufactured black paper or matboard, just remember that you will still have to use a black c/pencil for your darkest darks--because the paper will not be dark enough to serve that function itself.

2. Most ready-made dark papers and matboards won't take more than about two layers without looking a bit "greasy" or overworked.

3. Colored paper also tends to "eat" c/pencil, because it takes more pigment material to register on black than on white paper. Some artists even go so far as to put some white pencil down first, and then add more and different color over that.

4. C/pencil color appears different on different colored supports. In order to devise a palette to work on any colored or black paper, make a sample page (on the paper you plan to use) of all the c/pencils you are interested in using. This way you can predict how effectively each one will actually appear in your drawing.

Q. How can I make yellow really bright? I get so much wax build up that it looks greasy dull instead of lively.

A. Yellow often is a difficult color to work with because it is inherently both vivid and light. This rare combination tends to trick us into using too much pencil pressure as we apply it, in order to see it satisfactorily. Adding to this, Prismacolor yellows are on the waxy side--so it is easy to accumulate too much wax if their 916 Canary Yellow is used as the dominant yellow.

And because looking at too much yellow seems also to fatigue our yellow sensory receptors, it is often necessary to use a little sleight-of-hand to express it effectively. Here are some suggestions illustrated below.

A. Increase contrast between uses of yellow and its environment. Yellow needs to be "set-up" with an optimum environment for the illusion of yellow to work. In the negative space of the daffodil (A.) a medium dark value was used to contrast with the flower. Other kinds of contrast could have been: a very dull color or neutral gray; or a near-complementary hue such as a blue-violet.

B. To further help in conjuring a vivid yellow, reach for "off yellow" colors that can read as yellow, but are not true yellows: ochre, yellowish oranges, greenish yellows, etc. For much of the daffodil petals (B.), three or four Faber-Castell near-yellows, plus some of the environment's colors were used. These near-yellows can pose as yellow without actually being one, and this sets the stage for the real yellow to come. Putting it another way: we are saving the real yellow for impact by keeping it scarce!

Q. I have come across a reference to a product called "Bestine" in a colored pencil book, but I don't know what it is. I've checked some other books on this medium, but have found no other references to it. Any info you have about "Bestine" would be appreciated.

A. This product is the trade name for a thinner used with rubber cement. Once a ubiquitous fixture in commercial art studios, it and rubber cement have pretty much faded into history, replaced by more modern technologies. Because it is toxic, I would recommend against this thinner's use with colored pencils. If you want to liquify pencil color, you might do better with one of the water soluble kinds. Their binders dissolve much more effectively than those of wax-based pencils used with any of the petroleum (or even citrus) type solvents.

Q. I'm planning a large work using wax-based colored pencils and Art Stix [the broad stick-like versions of Prismacolor pencils] on watercolor paper. I also plan to use some thinner to smooth the first layer, but I worry about the thinner eating the paper. Would applying a protective coat of acrylic wash first be necessary?

A. Exposure to petroleum-based solvents may contribute to a paper's gradual deterioration, even using thinners that are volatile and evaporate quickly. But because such solvents are also toxic to humans, I try to avoid incorporating them into the c/pencil medium which is itself non-toxic.

Instead, you might consider using water-soluble c/pencils and water as a thinner. There are many brands of these available. You also mentioned that you plan to use the broad-shaped Art Stix; finding a water-soluble clone may be difficult. How about using your regular c/pencil but with greatly flattened points for a wider stroke. To prepare this kind of pencil tip, simply hold the pencil in your usual way. Then, with firm pressure "scribble" back and forth until you've ground an angled flat tip. It won't be as broad as an Art Stix, but will be much wider than usual.

Q. Does it matter how colored pencils are stored from day to day? Does light, temperature, or humidity affect them?

A. Colored pencils are pretty forgiving tools, and are not much affected by normal exposure to light, temperature, and humidity. The real concern is to avoid dropping them. Make sure that wherever they are put down, they cannot roll away and drop onto a hard surface. For this can fracture their leads and make future sharpening of them a nightmare.

Interestingly, although the pencils themselves are actually tough little hombres, the drawings on paper made with them are susceptible to all the conditions you mention. So paper and drawings are what must be stored in a sheltered place, away from extremes of light, temperature, and too much humidity, or from rapid changes in humidity.

Q. How do you draw clear glass objects?

A. To draw or paint anything well it is necessary to resist falling back on most "tried and true" formulas or techniques. Yet there is a piece of advice that is helpful for creating an illusion of glass. This is not to draw it at all, but to just draw what is inside or behind it.

When drawing tinted glass, it is generally not a good idea to use white pencil as a lightener, as this tends to make glass look ceramic. It is better to use the paper itself as a light value, then add a bit of color as a tint for the glass.

For glass that is not clear, but is etched, enhraved or cut (as in crystal), a close observation from life becomes critical for seeing surface details or distortions. These more complex glass surfaces often seem to intimidate and mystify. Combat this by remembering that detail is simply detail, whether on tree bark, glass, or anything else. And detail, in its richness and complexity, is really like signs on an unfamiliar road, telling you where to go, where to guide and move your pencil.

More about drawing glass in "Hands On Pracice."

Q. Working on backgrounds really intimidates me. By the time I get to it I feel I'll ruin my drawing. Often I decide to just leave it white. My basic insecurity comes from not understanding which color will best compliment, not overpower my subject. Is there a rule of thumb you could pass on?

A. First, let's back up a bit. When we work on a piece in a color medium, we should routinely try to work on it altogether, rather than on just its subject. This concept of course is basic to painting.

Working first on just a subject is a comfortable old habit when drawing with black and white, and for these kinds of media it is probably okay. But when we begin to draw with color we are playing a different game, and not taking this into account can lead to the problems you describe.

Here's why: when you work on an element surrounded by white, you make all your color decisions based on how they work with the white. Then later, when you try to impose new background color, your original colors may seem inappropriate, making you feel you've somehow ruined the piece.

But the answer to this problem does not lie in choosing right or wrong background colors. It lies in changing your work process--in working more like a painter. As you work on an element, make sure you have a little of the background color near it already in place. This way you will be making your color decisions based on the colors near it rather than on the blank white. It helps also to skeep trying to regard your subject and its background as positive and negative areas of space, neither being more nor less important than the other.

A TIP: Here is a simple two-step process for helping to confront and determine the colors for both positive and negative space at an early stage. See illustrations below.

Q. I've had a set of Verithin colored pencils for some time but want to draw more and should probably get some new colored pencils. Can you recommend a good set or brand? I'm a college student, not a professional.

A. There are many good c/pencil brands out there. What I would avoid is "student grade" or "erasable" types, which are too often lacking in pigment strength. Assuming you are on a budget, I would also suggest avoiding pencil sets in favor or buying from open stock. This lets you mix pencil brands and to buy just what you need. But if you do choose to buy a set, be sure your supplier also sells your brand in open stock too for easy replacements.

As a minimum new selection, you'll probably need one pencil from each of the twelve hues of a traditional color wheel, plus a few others. These are, by hue and not name or brand specific:

	Red	Black
	Red-Violet	White (If you use heavy pressure technique.)
	Violet	Dark Blue (The darkest you can find.)
	Blue-Violet	Yellow Ochre
	Blue	Sienna
	Blue-Green	Umber
	Green
	Yellow-Green
	Yellow
	Yellow-Orange
	Orange
	Red-Orange

Q. I’m setting up a new workspace and want to know the best lighting to use with colored pencils?

A. This will depend on the final destination for your artwork. If you produce work that is likely to be hung in a home, then you should try for "home lighting"--that is, some natural daylight mixed with the common soft-white tungsten light. If you expect your work to be hung in an office, then you might want to use fluorescent lighting—both cool and warm—which is frequently used in commercial settings.

There are available some fairly expensive full-spectrum lamps which emulate daylight, but unless you are very sure this is the kind of light your work will live in, I wouldn’t try that route.

Q. You suggested in a recent "Professional Q & A" that juxtaposing color is often more effective and less time consuming than deep layering. Can you give us more details on this?

A. Juxtaposed color means applying different colors side-by-side rather than layering them on top of one another. What this does in effect is mix the colors optically instead of physically. Very little layering is used--usually only enough to convincingly blend or melt the different colors together. And the colors can be applied as small fragments or as larger areas.

	Selection of colors for combining can also be practically limitless--all warm or cold, all vivid or dull, alternating warm with cold, of vivid with dull, sticking with hue families, using triadic hues--almost any combination will work. You can work methodically, or be slap-dash. What makes juxtaposing colors a great time-saver is that layering is so minimized. And there is no loss of quality. In my own work I usually only layer now to correct or adjust color passages. Juxtaposing color is in fact seldom recognized in a finished piece--except that its color results may be more clearly experienced. (See illustration.)

Q. Are different brands of colored pencils compatible with each other?

A. Yes. Although some are wax-based, and some oil-based, some watersoluble and some not, they all may be freely used together. Every now and then you might run into a maverick pencil that doesn't want to coexist with others, but this happens only occasionally.

Q. When rendering flesh in portraiture, colored pencil tends to produce a dotty or granular texture (see illustration). Is there a way this effect can be minimized?

	A. Yes, by using a smooth or hot-pressed paper instead of the medium-grained paper that is generally used with this medium. Here are a few more options: 1.Try less waxy pencil brands--Derwent is a drier wax-based pencil; or try harder leads, or oil-based pencils. (Oil-based pencils have the added benefit in portraiture of being slightly smudgeable.) 2. If you don't want to give up the buttery quality of waxy pencils then select a paper that is less textured, (but still not smooth) such as Stonehenge made by Fox River Paper Company (Rising Mill). 3. Apply strokes in one direction rather than back and forth (which increases grain). 4. Keep your pencil tip very sharp in the flesh areas to minimize grain. Slowing helps too.
			Click on image to see close-up of grain.