Best Practices for Using a Colored Pencil

The practice of writing letters on a page is different than drawing and coloring with a colored pencil. The writing position can be useful but there are other ways to hold a colored pencil that can help you with different results.

The Writing Position

Your fingers grip the pencil low and tight in the writing position. This is ideal for drawing and coloring details in your artwork. As you would control the pencil through the movements to create a letter or punctuation mark, you can also draw detail like blades of grass or etchings on a piece of metal.

 

 

On The Side

Another way to hold a colored pencil is with your fingers halfway up the pencil and with the lead flat on the paper, which allows for sweeping curves and lines. This practice enables you to get more of the pigment from the pencil tip onto the paper, such as for creating a meadow in the wind or the sea.

Vertically

Closer to the writing position than the sideways position, a vertical position allows superfine control of the pencil tip. Create grains of sand, stones and other details to add texture.

Keep Your Pencil Sharp

A sharp colored pencil is key for all coloring techniques. In an earlier post we have looked at techniques to maintain a sharp tip for your colored pencils.

 

 

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