Most of you know that we can blend colored pencils with solvents or the colorless blender. In this article I’d like to share some other blending techniques that don’t require blending with Gamsol. While these blending techniques may not be brand new, I discovered these methods by experimenting with my colored pencil drawing.

Because blending with solvents may look harsh on drawing paper not every drawing is a good candidate for it. I think solvents help a lot when you draw on textured surface or the size of your drawing paper is very large and you want to cover and build the tones in the background. Not every artist likes blending with the solvents. So here is the alternative to that.

Colored pencil blending without the use of solvents

visionary art veronica winters — Plunge, 19x25in, colored pencil on paper | https://veronicasart.com/product/plunge/

In this drawing titled “Plunge” 19×25″ I used both blending techniques discussed below.

Finesse Colored Pencil blender pen is formulated to blend wax-based colored pencils like Prismacolor Premier and Caran d’Ache Luminance. It won’t do much blending for harder pencils like Polychromos but you’ll still see some blending occurring because all colored pencils have some wax in them.

This pen is very convenient because it has two tips and you can’t spill it like solvents. It’s also non-toxic and easy to carry around or store in a colored pencil box.

I find that it dries out quite quickly however.

I blend large areas in the background using Finesse. I continue drawing over the blended areas after that to make colors even more vibrant.

Winsor & Newton Pigment marker, white blender is a very soft white. It’s not suitable to make strong, white highlights but what I discovered working with it is more useful. Once I’ve done some colored pencil shading, I can blend everything with this marker. It does give some white tint to the surface but it also blends colored pencil well. So I use it when I want to both blend and lighten up the area. I think it could be replaced with a different brand to have the same effect but you need to always TEST your art maetrials on a separate piece of paper.

Winsor & Newton permanent markers and sakura pen | You can buy the W&N white blender separately. Also, you can try using the Sakura pen gives very strong white highlights.

I use W&N white pigment marker to blend and lighten up the entire area seen at the bottom right. I also blend some of the bubbles here.

Always test your ideas on a separate piece of paper before committing to actual drawing! It’s very frustrating to ruin your colored pencil drawing testing something new right on it.

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In this article you’ll find information about Koh-i-Noor colored pencils and Koh-i-Noor drawing paper. I also include the video of these products you can find below. I’m not an affiliate and I write reviews for the art supplies I actually use in my drawings. Koh-i-Noor Hardtmuth is a Czech republic manufacturer and distributor of art supplies and stationery. Founded in 1790 by Joseph Hardtmuth of Austria, this company makes affordably-priced, quality art supplies.

Koh-i-Noor colored pencils review

Lightfastness: varies, but good overall
Durability: fair
Softness: varies, on softer side
Price: very competitively priced
Pigment saturation/vividness: good

Koh-i-Noor Polycolor colored pencils, 72 colors

koh i noor polycolor review _veronica winters blog

I have a large, 72 colors set and I’ve done several colored pencil drawings using this set. Overall, these are good colored pencils for art students. They are not as creamy as Prismacolor Premier or Luminance but layer quite nicely that requires minimal blending drawing on smooth paper. So they’re ok for beginner art students.

Hardness/softness:

The softness is good but not great. Because they are not super soft like Prismacolor Premier, you can create lots of details drawing with Polycolor. I think they are good to draw details over the initial layering done in softer colored pencils. Drawing backgrounds and shading over large areas can be very time-consuming. Occasionally, they break during sharpening.

Color/pigment saturation:

Because they are not as creamy as Luminance or Prismacolor, they don’t have exceptional saturation/vividness. However, these pencils will pleasantly surprise you with their range of beautiful colors and fair color saturation. Some colors seem to be softer and more vivid than others in a set.

Price:

Koh-i-Noor Polycolor box sets are very competitively priced and are worth your dollars if you are a student on a budget. However I’d choose Prismacolors over this brand for higher pigment saturation and softness.

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Lightfastness chart:

Here you can take note of the lightfastness rating. Koh-i-noor colored pencils vary in its ability to withstand the light, which is similar to the Prismacolor Premier. Most Polycolor colored pencils have a very good lightfastness rating. So, if the lightfastness is important to you, you can weed out all the fugitive colors out of the set from the get go (1-2 stars are fugitive colors).

This is one of the drawings completed using the koh-i-noor Polycolor colored pencils.

Koh-i-noor woodless colored pencils review

These colored pencils are very similar to Koh-i-Noor Polycolor. They seem to be a bit softer, layer nicely, and some colors seem to be richer in pigment saturation than others. It’s nice to sharpen them to a fine point and then use the pencil on details and large areas alike, but their main problem is breakage. Two pencils broke in half by themselves when I began drawing with them.

This is one of the drawings completed using the koh-i-noor woodless colored pencils and a white pen on colored paper.

Koh-i-Noor Tri-Tone

These are really fun pencils to color with! Each colored pencil consists of 2-3 hues you can color with by rotating the pencil to change the color. They are pretty soft and vivid. You can really explore your funky side drawing with Tri-Tone. I think they are great for general coloring and gift-giving. They can be fun for both teens and adults to make small drawings or to work on a coloring page, but their main downside is considerable breakage during sharpening. The lightfastness is pretty good according to the manufacturer’s list.

Koh-i-Noor Drawing Paper review

koh i noor drawing paper and colored pencils_veronica winters blog

I absolutely love koh-i-noor drawing paper and its my favorite now! I only wish the manufacturer could come up with a bunch of bright colored papers. Koh-i-noor manufactures drawing papers with several surfaces: Bristol smooth, Bristol vellum and colored pencil. All of them have thick pages and accept multiple layering, which is great for colored pencil drawing. The surfaces are smooth, yet the minimal texture of Colored Pencil Drawing and Bristol Vellum papers aids to smooth and even layering that requires no blending with solvents, and some minimal blending with a pencil blender like Caran d’Ache full blender. Link to Amazon.

Koh-i-noor black drawing paper has very thin pages but the surface is truly amazing to work on. It is very smooth with just the right paper tooth to grab the color. The in & out pages feature is also really great because I can take a page out, draw on it, and then put it right back into the album for storage.

Veronica Winters Painting

Connect to your light with visionary art. Experience beauty to bring you into unity with the divine.

Tag: colored pencil blending

Two solvent-free colored pencil blending techniques