Using colored pencils to lighten areas

A couple weeks ago I mentioned in a post that most people pick Copic colors that are too dark to start. Instead of investing in a whole new pile of Copics (which will probably happen anyways since the markers are so addictive) here is a way to get more from what you already have.

Adding Light with Colored Pencils
For today's technique we are working opposite of a technique I shared back in August for using colored pencils with Copic markers. For that post I was working with light marker colors and adding dark colored pencil, for today's technique we're going to be using dark marker and light colored pencil.

Colored pencil is a wax that leaves an opaque residue behind when you are working with it. Colored pencils look better on a paper that has a slight tooth to it, since this helps pull the color off the paper, so today I'm working on a rough textured paper (sorry, I don't know what brand).

Remember: Always use the pencil LAST. Otherwise the wax clogs your marker tip.

If you have a dark colored area you can overlay a lighter colored pencil and cover up the darker color, to some extent (it's hard to get back to pure white, rather, you can get close with a white pencil). This is handy when you are in a small area and you colored it too dark, but pulling the extra color out with your colorless blender would leave a bigger mess than you had in the first place. Just add a dab of light pencil and you're good to go.

One nice thing about colored pencil is that you can overlay lighter colors that normally you would have a hard time blending back into a dark area with marker. If you look at my example you can see that I added a few different tones of pencil over my dark red and each came out feeling a little different.

For my final example today, I'm working with the stamp set Poppy Patch by Flourishes. Notice in the first example you can only get so much color variation from a YG67 and a R59. Both colors are dark and they make the poppy seem flat. I like that even on this textured paper the marker looks smooth and clean, but having dark colors is a bummer.

If you add a bit of light colored pencil you can quickly and easily bring back some of the highlights and make the image not so blah and dark. It changes the tone of the poppy to more of an orange, rather than a deep red. The texture on the paper also adds to the feel of the artwork. It reminds people that these were colored by hand and not generated on a computer.