As you become more comfortable with colored pencils, it's time to push your limits. Like most mediums including oil pastels, watercolors, and countless others, they can be manipulated in various ways to create stunning effects.

Today we are going to talk about blending.

Why? Of all the techniques and effects with colored pencils, blending is one of the easiest to learn yet toughest to master. When not done properly, an attempt to blend colored pencils will look just that—an attempt, not a clean execution.

Before we jump into a few pointers on how to better blend your pencils, we first want to cover the composition of colored pencils (this stuff is important and worth understanding).

Colored Pencil Composition Is Key To Better Blending

Most people might think that what a product is made of is secondary. However, this couldn't be further from the truth when talking about colored pencils. To blend or manipulate this medium, it's important to understand what colored pencils are specifically made from. This knowledge will help you easily create effects (and even new techniques) that will bring your most imaginative works to life.

When looking at the composition of colored pencils, you will find that they primarily rely on one of two ingredients:

Each of these has its own set of characteristics that can be altered or changed both before and after the pencil is applied to the paper.

Wax

Some brands of colored pencils, such as Prismacolor and Derwent, contain a wax core combined with pigment. When applied to your favorite paper for colored pencils, the results are slightly slick yet still vibrant. As such, there are only certain solvents and tools that will work effectively in moving the wax around on the paper once it has been applied (we will go over these details in just a moment). Unless the company states otherwise, assume that it's wax in your colored pencils.

Oil

In contrast to wax, some colored pencils, like Faber Castell Polychromos, contain a significant amount of oil in their core. This creates a much softer lead that blends a bit better out of the box. However, from a chemical standpoint, oil-based colored pencils are starkly different from wax-based pencils and require different solvents to break down (i.e., dissolve) the oil and push the pigment around on the surface.

Techniques To Blending Colored Pencils Effectively

Now that we have a better understanding of what's in your favorite colored pencils, let's focus on the important part—blending them. Within the world of blending colored pencils, there are essentially 4 key tools and methods that you can use:

Solvents
White Colored Pencil
Colorless Blenders
Tortillons

We are going to take some time to talk about each one in more detail:

Solvents

One of the most effective and easiest ways to manipulate a colored pencil after it is applied to the paper is through the use of solvents. Depending on the base ingredient (remember wax or oil), you will want to choose the appropriate solvent. Not selecting the right one will simply be a waste of money and result in less than desirable outcomes.

If you come from an oil painting background and have oil-based colored pencils, you will instantly know what you can use—odorless mineral spirits or turpentine. Either one of these studio-safe solvents can completely dissolve the colored pencil with ease—just be sure that you don't overdo it (as it can quickly destroy your drawing), and also make sure that you use an artist-grade solvent. Using solvents purchased at the hardware store are intended for outdoor use, contain lots of impurities, and often cause headaches that definitely won't feel comfortable.

Opposite of oil-based colored pencils, you will have wax. While some artists like to recommend alcohol or baby oil as a solvent for colored pencils, we feel that it delivers lackluster results. According to this post, and countless others across the web, if the wax in your colored pencil is paraffin wax*, you will want to use a solvent such as xylene (found in this blender by Chartpak) as it will do a much better job compared to other household ingredients.

*If you want to know the exact wax used to make your colored pencil, we recommend reaching out to the manufacturer and simply asking them for clarification.

White Colored Pencil

Solvents aside, one great way to get uniform and consistent blends in your artwork is to use a white colored pencil (or whatever color the surface is that you are drawing on) as a way to manipulate this medium. Unfortunately, when applying a colored pencil to many papers, the white texture of the paper seeps through. However, when applying a white base and then adding your 2 or 3 colors on top of it, you can get much more seamless blends between the color hues.

Colorless Blenders

Perfect for wax-based colored pencils, colorless blenders such as this one from Prismacolor are ideal for pushing around the medium on the paper. This blender is simply the colored pencil without the pigment (i.e., straight wax). For best results, you will want to use a blender pencil from the brand that your colored pencils come from, as this will contain the same exact wax composition as those on the paper. If unsure, mixing across brands will of course be ok too. In addition to pushing existing strokes and colors, you can also use a colorless blender as a base and apply colored pencils on top of it (just like what we covered in the white colored pencil method).

Tortillons

Primarily used in both pastel and graphite drawings, tortillons (sometimes referred to as blending stumps) are simply wound-up pieces of compressed paper. Able to work with both wax and oil-based colored pencils, this is by far the most "physical" way to blend your colored pencils. The reason why we say "physical" is that in order to get clean blends on the surface, you will be simply pushing the pigment and binder on the paper until it gets to your preference with the tortillon.

Video Of How To Blend Colored Pencils

In the age of YouTube, there is both a lot of really good and really bad advice out there. However, we came across this video by Fadil that expertly walks us through some of the most popular blending techniques you can use with your colored pencils. After watching the video, if there is any feedback or critiques we would like to add, it would be around the solvent portion. While Fadil does note that you can use odorless mineral spirits or turpentine, the use of baby oil is ok (it's essentially liquid paraffin), we think the results would have been a bit better with xylene or a similar solvent. But do check out this 18-minute video, we think it's definitely worth the time investment in sitting through the whole thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS9r4zjWTZo

What Is Art?

Whenever writing articles about techniques and manipulation of mediums on a surface (i.e., see oil pastel techniques, etc.), we can't help but question our understanding of art. We pose this question to you—if you are using oil-based colored pencils on canvas and use odorless mineral spirits to manipulate the medium, is it really technically a colored pencil drawing at this point? How does this really differ from an oil pastel drawing or even an oil painting? Really, it's all just a pigment on a surface that is getting moved around, right? Anyhow, we wanted to leave you with that little bit to chew on and think about.

If there is anything that we have understood more and more as this site develops, it's that art is an amazing form of expression. Furthermore, in order to get good as an artist, one must understand the fundamentals, experiment, and push the limits. But no matter the medium, it's always most important to make sure that you have a bit of fun when making art!