Are Colored Pencils Worth Learning? An Honest Take

Colored pencils are one of the most underestimated art tools in the world — capable of producing gallery-worthy realism, yet dismissed by many as "just for kids." That's a mistake worth correcting.

Most people picked up a box of Crayolas as a child and moved on. They never saw what colored pencils look like in the hands of someone who actually knows how to use them. We're talking photorealistic animal portraits. Botanical illustrations that look like photographs. Human faces that stop you cold.

The market for colored pencils hit USD 2.14 billion in 2024 and is on track to nearly double by 2034. That's not coloring book sales — that's professional artists, illustrators, architects, and designers who use these tools every day because they're precise, controllable, and portable in a way that oil paints and watercolors simply aren't.

If you've been thinking about picking this up, here's what you actually need to know before you start.

Key Takeaways

• Colored pencils are professional-grade tools — not just for beginners — used in fine art, illustration, and commercial work.
• The four core colored pencil techniques (layering, blending, burnishing, sgraffito) can be learned in a matter of weeks.
• Wax-based pencils blend more easily; oil-based pencils hold sharper points — choosing between them changes how you work.
• Paper matters as much as pencils. The wrong surface can ruin great technique.
• Structured courses dramatically speed up your progress compared to trial and error alone.

In This Article

• What Colored Pencils Can Really Do (Not What You Think)
• The Core Colored Pencil Techniques That Change Everything
• Which Colored Pencils Should You Actually Buy
• Why Colored Pencil Paper Makes or Breaks Your Work
• Your Colored Pencils Learning Path From Zero to Confident
• Related Skills Worth Exploring
• Frequently Asked Questions About Colored Pencils

What Colored Pencils Can Really Do (Not What You Think)

Here's what nobody shows you in school: colored pencils, used properly, can produce work that looks like a painting. Not a cartoon. Not a coloring page. A painting.

The Colored Pencil Society of America runs annual exhibitions where the winning pieces regularly fool people into thinking they're looking at photographs or oil paintings. Fine lines, subtle gradients, luminous skin tones — all from pencils on paper.

The reason most people never see this is that they try colored pencils once, press too hard, fill in a flat layer of color, and think "this doesn't look like anything." That's not the medium failing. That's using the tool wrong. It's like judging watercolor by finger-painting with it.

Professional illustrators use colored pencils for book covers, editorial work, and product design. Architects use them for hand-rendered drawings. Natural history illustrators — the kind whose work ends up in museums — often prefer pencils over everything else because of the level of detail and control they offer.

And here's the thing about starting now: colored pencils reward patience and precision, not raw talent. You don't need to be "born artistic." You need to learn the techniques. That's it. Artists like Ann Kullberg, who's been teaching colored pencil for decades, have helped thousands of total beginners produce work they're genuinely proud of.

The ceiling on this medium is much higher than almost anyone starting out expects. That's both the challenge and the opportunity.

The Core Colored Pencil Techniques That Change Everything

There are four techniques that separate beginners from people whose work looks professional. Learn these, and everything else follows.

Layering is the foundation. You don't push a single color flat onto the paper. You build it up — light layers on top of light layers, gradually increasing density and depth. Start with your lightest colors. Add medium tones. Build toward dark. This is how you get that luminous quality where the color seems to glow from within.

Think of it like glazing in oil painting. Each layer is transparent. They interact with each other. The color you see is the result of all the layers together, not just the one on top. This guide to the five essential colored pencil techniques walks through layering step-by-step if you want to see it demonstrated.

Blending is what makes transitions smooth. There are several ways to do it. You can blend by layering one color over another in overlapping strokes. You can use a colorless blender pencil — a pencil with no pigment — to push colors together on the paper. Or you can use odorless mineral spirits on a cotton swab to liquefy the wax and blend colors the way you'd blend paint. Each method gives a different result. Experimentation is the only way to find your preference.

Burnishing is layering taken to the extreme. You press firmly — much firmer than you'd think — and grind the pigment into the paper until there are no gaps left. The result is a smooth, almost waxy surface with no paper texture showing through. It creates a completely different look from regular layering. Carrie L. Lewis has a practical guide to burnishing that's worth bookmarking for when you're ready to try it.

Sgraffito is the technique most beginners have never heard of. After you've built up layers of color, you take a craft knife or a sharp tool and scratch through the surface — removing color to reveal what's underneath. Use this for fine white hairs on an animal portrait. For the veins in a leaf. For tiny bright highlights. It sounds destructive. It looks like magic.

Want to see all of this come together in a real project? Lachri Fine Art on YouTube (Lisa Clough's channel) has over 300 colored pencil tutorials, including full project walkthroughs. It's one of the best free resources out there for watching technique in action.

If you want to go deeper — from beginner to genuinely confident — The Colored Pencils Drawing Masterclass on Udemy covers all of these techniques with structured practice. It has over 4,000 students and focuses on actually building skills, not just explaining theory.

EDITOR'S CHOICE

Painting with Colored Pencils: A Beginner's Guide

Skillshare • Kendyll Hillegas • 4.51/5 • 17,496 students enrolled

This course is the best entry point for beginners because Kendyll teaches colored pencils the way painters think — about light, color relationships, and building form — not just how to fill in a shape. After finishing it, you won't just know what layering and blending are. You'll understand why you're doing them, which changes everything about how fast you improve.

Which Colored Pencils Should You Actually Buy

This is the question that sends beginners down a rabbit hole. Here's the short answer: don't start with the cheap ones.

Student-grade colored pencils (the ones under $10 for a set of 72) have poor pigment, inconsistent cores, and colors that fade. You'll spend more time fighting the tool than learning the technique. Once you've done the basic technique practice, move to artist grade. It makes a difference you'll feel immediately.

The two biggest names are Faber-Castell Polychromos and Prismacolor Premier, and they're genuinely different in how they feel and work.

Polychromos are oil-based. They have a firmer, harder core. They hold a sharp point much longer. They don't crumble or break as easily. And they don't produce "wax bloom" — that hazy coating that can appear on wax-based pencil work over time. Out of their 120 colors, 102 have the highest possible lightfastness rating, which matters if you ever sell or exhibit your work. At around $1.40 per pencil, they're a significant investment — but they last.

Prismacolor Premier are wax-based. They're softer, which means the pigment goes down more easily and blends more smoothly. Great for beginners who want results quickly. The downside: they break more easily, they don't hold a sharp point as long, and wax bloom can appear (though it's easily wiped away with a soft cloth). But for sheer blendability and richness of color, many artists swear by them.

Sarah Renae Clark's detailed comparison of top colored pencil brands is one of the most thorough side-by-side tests available online — worth reading before you spend money. And if you want to see the full wax vs. oil breakdown, The Virtual Instructor has a comprehensive explanation.

If you want to go premium, Caran d'Ache Luminance pencils are extraordinary — exceptional lightfastness, buttery application, and a color range that's hard to beat. They're also expensive. Save them for when you know this is a medium you're going to stick with.

The Caran d'Ache guide to choosing pencils for professional use is also useful for understanding what you're looking for as your skills grow.

For a structured approach to buying and using your first artist-grade set, Working with Colored Pencils — Basics and Practice on Udemy walks you through materials selection alongside actual technique practice. Over 3,200 students have taken it, and it's one of the more practical starting points available.

Why Colored Pencil Paper Makes or Breaks Your Work

Here's something nobody tells beginners: you can have the best pencils in the world and terrible results if you're using the wrong paper.

Colored pencils need texture — what artists call "tooth" — to grip the pigment. Regular printer paper is too smooth. After two or three layers, it gets saturated and the pencil just slides across the surface. You can't build up the depth you need.

The paper you want has enough tooth to hold multiple layers without getting overwhelmed. Here's what works:

Bristol Paper (vellum surface) is a popular beginner choice. It's smooth enough for detail work but has enough tooth for layering. Widely available and not expensive.

Stonehenge Paper is a cotton-based paper that's become a standard for serious colored pencil work. It's soft, has a gentle tooth, and holds layers beautifully without the surface breaking down. Many professional artists use nothing else.

PastelMat has a heavier tooth and is almost more like a sandpaper surface. It holds an enormous amount of pigment, which means you can apply more layers than on almost any other surface. It produces a distinctive texture that some artists love.

Sanded paper (like Uart or Clairefontaine Pastelmat) is an advanced option worth exploring once you're past the beginner stage — the Colored Pencils on Sanded Paper course on Udemy is specifically designed for learning on this surface.

The rule of thumb: go at least 90lb weight. Lighter paper buckles, especially if you're using any solvent for blending. The Virtual Instructor's rundown of the best papers for colored pencils goes into more detail on each option, including price comparisons.

Your Colored Pencils Learning Path From Zero to Confident

The biggest mistake beginners make is jumping straight into complex subjects. A portrait. A dog. A detailed landscape. These require combining multiple techniques at once — and when things go wrong (they will), you can't tell which part failed.

Start simpler. Draw a sphere. It sounds boring. It's not. A sphere forces you to practice gradients, light direction, shadow, and blending all in one shape. Once you can shade a sphere convincingly, you've developed the fundamental vocabulary for almost everything else.

Then move to simple objects — fruit, flowers, a single eye. Not because they're interesting subjects, but because they let you focus on one technique at a time. A lemon teaches you how yellows behave. A rose teaches you how to build petals. A single eye teaches you how to create texture, depth, and reflection — all at once, in a small space.

This week, try this: watch Lachri Fine Art on YouTube for 30 minutes. Pick one beginner tutorial. Follow along. You'll learn more in that session than from reading ten more articles. Carrie L. Lewis also offers 13 free colored pencil tutorials on her site — another excellent free starting point.

If you want structured learning — the kind that takes you from "I don't know where to start" to "I can actually draw this" — here are the best places to invest:

Painting with Colored Pencils: A Beginner's Guide (Skillshare) is the best overall starting point. Kendyll Hillegas teaches with genuine depth. You'll come away understanding color and light, not just technique.

Colored Pencils Art Class on Udemy takes a project-based approach — you'll work through actual pieces from start to finish, which is how real skills get built.

For portraits specifically, Colored Pencil Portraits Made Simple breaks down one of the hardest subjects in a way that's actually approachable.

The two books worth owning are Texture in Colored Pencil by Ann Kullberg and The Ultimate Guide to Colored Pencil by Gary Greene. Both have been standards in the field for years. They cover what video tutorials often skip: the why behind the technique, not just the how.

And when you're ready to connect with other artists — to share work, ask questions, and see what's possible — the r/ColoredPencils community on Reddit is genuinely welcoming. The Colored Pencil Society of America is also worth knowing about — they run exhibitions, workshops, and an annual convention for serious practitioners.

For a broader look at what's available, browse all colored pencil courses on TutorialSearch — there are over 160 across different platforms, skill levels, and subjects. And if you want to explore the wider world of drawing and illustration, the Art and Illustration category has thousands more.

The best time to learn this was five years ago. The second best time is right now. Pick one resource from this article, block out two hours this weekend, and start.

Related Skills Worth Exploring

If colored pencils have caught your interest, these related skills pair naturally with them:

• Illustration Techniques — the broader drawing skills that make colored pencil work stronger: composition, perspective, value, and form.
• Watercolor Illustration — another portable, traditional medium with a completely different feel. Many artists use watercolor and colored pencils together in mixed media work.
• Mixed Media Art — combining colored pencils with watercolor, ink, or other materials opens up a whole new range of effects.
• Watercolor Techniques — valuable companion skills, especially if you want to explore water-soluble colored pencils.
• Beginner Art — if you're brand new to making art at all, this is the place to start building foundational skills before diving into any specific medium.

Frequently Asked Questions About Colored Pencils

How long does it take to learn colored pencils?

You can produce work you're genuinely proud of within 3 to 6 months of consistent practice. Basic technique — layering, blending, basic shading — can be learned in a few weeks. Real proficiency takes longer, but the progress is visible early and that keeps people going. Explore beginner art courses to start building a foundation alongside your colored pencil practice.

What are the best colored pencils for detailed drawing?

For detailed work, artist-grade colored pencils with harder cores hold sharper points longer. Faber-Castell Polychromos (oil-based) are the top recommendation for detail-focused work. They stay sharp, don't crumble, and have excellent pigment. Prismacolor Premier are better for blending but can't hold a point quite as long.

How do you blend colored pencils smoothly?

Smooth blending comes from layering multiple light strokes rather than pressing hard with one color. You can blend by layering one color over another, by using a colorless blender pencil to push pigment together, or by using odorless mineral spirits with a cotton swab to dissolve the wax. Each method gives a different result. The Virtual Instructor's technique guide demonstrates several approaches.

What paper is best for colored pencils?

Textured paper at 90lb or heavier works best. Stonehenge paper is a professional standard. Bristol vellum surface is great for beginners and widely available. Avoid smooth printer paper — it gets saturated after two or three layers and you can't build any depth. The surface texture is what lets the pigment grip.

Are colored pencils good for professional illustration?

Yes — colored pencils are used by professional illustrators, editorial artists, and natural history illustrators around the world. The Colored Pencil Society of America showcases professional-level work annually. The medium's precision and control over color saturation make it particularly well-suited for detailed, realistic illustration work.

What's the difference between wax and oil colored pencils?

Wax-based colored pencils (like Prismacolor) are softer and blend more easily, but can produce wax bloom over time and break more easily. Oil-based colored pencils (like Polychromos) are harder, hold a point longer, don't produce bloom, and are generally more durable. Beginners often start with wax for ease of blending, then explore oil-based as their technique develops.