how to blend colored pencils

How to Blend Colored Pencils

How to blend colored pencils, you wish to know?

When it comes how to blend colored pencils there are many useful blending options, the difference between them is what you will like more. And different techniques gives a different look, with some of them you will get the glazed effect with others more mat effect. And it is all up to your creative choice, what you will like the most.

Important for all technique of blending is a good paper for colored pencils, you simply can't approach blending on light paper. You will destroy your drawing because you didn't pick right paper. Blending is very let's say aggressive in dry blending technique, also wet technique can easily destroy blending areas if you overwork.

How to blend colored pencils with colored pencils

Now you are maybe little confused, but actually this is very often the technique of blending among artists. For this technique you will need some practice to master it, it is a very demanding way of blending.

Art supplies for this technique

• Colored pencils ( do you have the right ones? )
• Blender and Burnisher Pencils ( if you wish to go one level up, then they are must have)

To start with this blending technique you should start with lightest tones you have, and build up to darkest. It is good to have as many as a possible variation of color you will blend because then you get nice transitions among colors. And that gives the effect that colors are blended together, and when you get some skills with this blending technique you will become unstoppable.

And if you decide to actually blend with colorless blending pencil, and finish with burnishing pencil for a glossy look. Well then you will get some extra blended artworks, but it is crucial that you do good work with your pencils.

Artists says for blending colorless pencils that when you try it, you are a hooked lifetime. The reason is a variety of action you can do with them like blending colors, and it is great for softening edges if you have sharp edges. Also, it is great to use to make your colors pop up, colors will become more intense.

How to blend colored pencils dry method with stumps

For this technique of blending colored pencils, you will need normal stumps that you can find in every art store or HERE, and working with them is maybe the easiest way of blending.

What are stumps and Tortillions?

Stumps or Tortillions are cylindrical rolled paper in shapes of pencils, and they are rolled very tightly. But yet they are enough soft so you can blend with them, and use them for your charcoal, graphite pencils, and colored pencils drawings.  You can get different sizes and hardness of stumps, and also you can pick the ones you will use for larger areas or for fine detail blending.

With stumps, you have more space for mistakes  then with others techniques where you must be more careful. The reason for this is that you work with them in dry layers, and that is much slower technique. Slow enough that you can see where you must apply blending, and because it is dry method blending you can do it anytime later. Over and over again, until you will get satisfied result. The cons of this way of blending that are more time consuming, and also you will not get the glazed effect.

Another technique how to blend colored pencils is with stumps and odorless mineral oil, and that is wet technique. You can read about this technique bellow, and hopefully learn this great way of blending.

But let's return to dry techniques because there are dry techniques of blending, but here you must use harder colored pencils. If you watch the video you will see that Sarah Becktel use this great way of blending, and she is explaining in details how you must approach blending. In the video, she uses both ways of blending with stumps and harder pencils, so it recommended that you watch carefully this video.

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How to blend colored pencils with stumps and odorless mineral oil

Art supplies needed for this technique

• Stumps
• Odorless mineral oil
• Quality paper for colored pencils (you can read about best paper for colored pencils in our review)
• Baby oil

You can choose the same stumps like for dry technique, but here you must dip your stumps in odorless mineral oil. And now when you have soaked tip stumps you can start blending from darkest to lighter areas.

Odorless mineral oil will actually melt pigment of colored pencils, and you will get nicely smooth blended areas. Same effect you will get also if you use normal baby oil, but after applying you will not longer able to apply color on it. Because you will create an oily surface and oil is not allowing the color to get trough on the paper. It is also important to have good paper for colored pencils because solvent can easily destroy paper after applying.

A maybe best example you will see in Dina Kowal video tutorial, she is explaining the process of blending step by step. And you can see the difference between different solvents that she is using for blending. You will notice also that she is using  also blending pencils, which is an easy and fast way of blending of colored pencils. But more about them after the video.

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How to Blend Colored Pencils with Colorless Blender Marker

Out of the box solution comes in colorless blender marker, something the is the fast and instant solution. It is created with purpose so that can instantly apply blending, without the need to have stumps and odorless mineral oils. It is all in one solution, and on the market you can find many great brands that have this kind of colorless blender for colored pencils.

Also, the very clever thing is a double-ended tip, one size is small for fine details and on the other side you have a wide sized tip. Which is great if you have larger areas for blending, and this wide side speeds up the process.

Prismacolor Marker itself is actually created for colored markers, but it is perfect also for colored pencils. And it  is the most used blender marker for colored pencils on the market, proved as must have asset of every colored pencil artist.

how to blend colored pencils

Source: https://inspirationalartzone.com/how-to-blend-colored-pencils/

Posted by: warnersittort.blogspot.com

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