Why does my coloured pencil work look waxy, patchy and streaky?

Coloured pencil looks like an easy medium and behaves like a difficult one, because the mark is so light that the temptation is always to press harder. Pressing hard flattens the paper texture, fills the tooth immediately and gives you a shiny surface that will accept nothing else. Everything good about the medium comes from patience with light layers.

Step by step

1. Keep the pencil genuinely sharp, all the time.A sharp point puts pigment into the hollows of the paper texture as well as onto the peaks, which is exactly what stops patchiness. A blunt pencil rides the surface and leaves white specks. Sharpen far more often than feels reasonable.
2. Work with light pressure and many layers.Six to twelve layers is normal in serious coloured pencil work. Each one should be barely visible on its own. The colour depth comes from accumulation, not from pressure.
3. Use small overlapping circles rather than straight strokes.Circular or figure-of-eight motion with a light touch fills the texture evenly and leaves no directional grain. Straight hatching is a legitimate style but it will always show its direction.
4. Build the colour from several hues, not one.Layering a warm and a cool version of a colour, plus a complementary in the shadows, produces depth that a single pencil cannot. Coloured pencils mix optically on the paper, layer over layer.
5. Establish the darks with a dark hue, not black.Black coloured pencil deadens everything it touches. Dark shadows built from a deep blue, a violet or a dark brown over the local colour stay alive.
6. Burnish only at the end.Burnishing is heavy pressure with a light-coloured or colourless blender pencil, which crushes the layers into a smooth, glossy, fully saturated surface. It is a finishing move — burnish early and you cannot add anything afterwards.
7. Choose the paper for the effect you want.Smooth, heavy paper such as a hot-pressed or Bristol surface gives an even, near-photographic result. Toothy paper gives texture and takes more layers before filling. Cheap thin paper will not survive the layering.
8. Wipe off wax bloom if it appears.A cloudy white film that develops days or weeks after heavy burnishing is wax rising to the surface. Wipe gently with a soft dry cloth and it disappears. A light coat of fixative discourages it returning.

Tips

• A colourless blender pencil, or a solvent blender applied with a cotton bud, dissolves the binder and merges layers into a smooth film. Solvent blending is fast and effective, but ventilate and treat it as you would any solvent.
• Wax-based and oil-based pencils behave differently: wax-based are softer and blend more easily but bloom; oil-based are harder, hold a point better and do not bloom. Many artists use both, oil-based for detail over wax-based ground layers.
• Working on toned or coloured paper saves enormous numbers of layers, because you start from a mid value rather than from white.
• An electric or a good crank sharpener earns its place instantly. Hand sharpening this often will drive you mad and breaks more points.

Common mistakes

• Pressing hard to get the colour to appear — It flattens the paper tooth, fills it in a single layer and produces the shiny waxy surface. The colour looks stronger for one layer and then you can never go further.
• Using one pencil per object — A single hue at varying pressure gives you a flat, plastic-looking result. Depth comes from layering several related colours.
• Outlining everything in a darker version of the colour — It reads as a colouring book. Let value changes define edges instead.
• Using white to lighten a colour — White coloured pencil is opaque and chalky, and it burnishes. To keep a colour light, use fewer layers of it, not white on top.

If it doesn't work

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