The great thing about watercolor pencils is that they can be used both dry and wet. They can be used in combination with regular colored pencils, they can be used with or without water, and they can create many different colors just through water manipulation.
You can use watercolor pencils on paper. You’ll want to pay attention to which paper you choose to depend on the effect you want. Any drawing paper will work if you’re just using dry pencils, but if you are planning on introducing water, make sure your paper is designed to withstand watercolor painting.
Watercolor pencils look the best on high-quality paper made just for watercolors, and pencil drawings that use water techniques to achieve paint strokes are no exception. If you want the most diversity out of your watercolor pencils, pick books or pages made of super high-quality watercolor paper.
What is a Watercolor Pencil?
A watercolor pencil is a pencil that is halfway between watercolor paints and a normal pencil and has attributes of both implements. Watercolor pencils are a great way to introduce yourself to watercolor painting, especially if your earliest attempts at watercolor painting turned into a muddled, bled, and grey disaster.
Regular colored pencils tend to use wax to bind the pigment, whereas watercolor pencils use a substance that will disappear in water as the binder in its core. This is why you can use regular pencils, then watercolor pencils, finish with water, and still see regular pencil strokes through the fanning watercolor pencil’s paint-like qualities.
Watercolor pencils are a wonderful choice for people who have an interest in other artistic tools, like paints but don’t want to leave the comfort of pencils due to their accessibility and ease of use within a coloring book. Watercolor pencils are a contender in more advanced coloring book techniques as they require a bit more thought than a standard pencil.
Why You Should Choose Watercolor Paper
For any of the designs you print out or for any of the books you’ve chosen to buy, if you’re going to use watercolor pencils, it’s advisable to have watercolor paper as the basis for your images. Even if you don’t plan to add water once you start practicing with watercolor pencils, you may change your mind at a future date. Using watercolor paper in the first place will allow you to revisit old drawings and drastically change them as your skills and confidence increase.
To identify a paper that will stand up to watercolor pencils, look for a descriptor in the book or on the paper you’re buying that specifies that the paper is from the 140 lb grade. This weight refers to how heavy 500 pieces of paper will be at one time. Paper at this weight and up will work best with watercolor pencils.
The watercolor paper contains a ton more cotton than traditional computer pages and book sheets. This abundance of cotton in the paper itself changes the way the paper’s fibers work together, and the paper can drink up water without wrinkling.
Since watercolor is capable of seeping into the valleys and peaks made by the paper’s texture due to its fibers, it’s much easier to get a deeper look into your drawing when the paper drinks up the paint. With thinner paper, the paint just sits on top of the smaller hills and crevices present at a microscopic level, and the paints mix and swirl together while not staying put.
Do I have To Use Water with My Watercolor Pencils?
No, you do not have to use water with your watercolor pencils. Using them as-is right out of the box will result in a drawing with the same quality as regular colored pencils. You can also use dry watercolor pencils and complete the whole coloring project without any water only to introduce water later down the road.
It’s advisable to keep your pencil marks drier on thinner paper since the paint won’t absorb properly. Most standard coloring books have a paper that needs to be wetted very sparingly, like with the end of a nondripping cotton swab. Getting too much water on a paper that doesn’t have the teeth to trap a bunch of pigment in it will cause the pigments to swirl together and look dull.
Water takes away the stroked pencil quality of an image, so keep that in mind. Do you want your drawing to have that swiped pencil feel? Then using the pencils dry is your best bet. Watercolor pencils that have been manipulated with water will look like paint, not pencils.
Keep in mind that the watery pencil will dry much faster than watercolor paints will. It’s also basically impossible to remove any wettened watercolor pencil from the page, so if you want to protect your ability to erase, stick to regular colored pencils.
Put the Tip of the Pencil in Water
If you soak a pencil tip in water, you’ll get a paint thickness on the page even though it’s manipulated by a pencil. This is quite different in appearance than using a dry pencil and then adding water. The colored pencil turns into something you’d almost expect from a paint pen, and while the pencil doesn’t leave distinctive strokes, the art is manipulated and a wettened pencil functions more like a standard pencil.
Make sure you have a set of pencils set aside just for soaking in water if you do choose to go this route. A pencil that has been soaked and then dries does not work the same as an untampered watercolor pencil, and you’ll want to make note of the distinctions before you choose this method. Choosing to buy a set of pencils just to soak in water is ideal as the pencils tend to get very brittle.
Wet the Paper to Bring Out the Watercolor Effects Immediately
If you take a paintbrush and saturate it in water, then brush the surface of the watercolor paper that you’re about to work on before you make a pencil marking, this will turn the watercolor pencil into a veritable paintbrush. Your swipes will apply like paint and fan out instead of looking like a swipe.
This is different than a wetted pencil because the pigment itself isn’t saturated before it hits the paper. The quality of the stroke is much less pencil-like.
Be careful not to ruin your drawing through oversaturation. When getting the paper wet, the potential for bleeding as you swipe the pencil is dramatically higher than with different methods. This may not be the method to choose to start your watercolor pencil journey as it takes a more advanced understanding of how watercolors work.
You must pay attention to the absorbency of the paper. It’s best to test the paper out beforehand so you have an idea of how to control the water content of your coloring surface. If the paper is too wet, the pigments will carry off the surface and mix and become muddy. However, if you can wet only the lightest areas, say a leaf or a teardrop at the edge of a mandala, just a touch from the pencil may smoothly create a painted effect across the entire area.
Check out our article on watercolor paper HERE.
Watercolor Pencils Are Similar Yet Different than Watercolor Paints
Watercolor pencil art follows a trope that watercolor painting doesn’t necessarily follow. Fewer layers of lighter color will look better when water is applied than heavy layering. The paints are the opposite. A sharp watercolor pencil allows you to add very detailed painted effects to your drawing that just can’t be achieved by most watercolorists. Many watercolor painters use watercolor pencils for tiny detailing work.
Before you commit to a paper type, test out your pencils with or without water on a variety of papers. Each brand will work with a different type of page, and the kind of watercolor paper you pick for your coloring book or printed images will make a significant difference. If you’ve been wanting to experiment with painting because coloring with regular color pencils just isn’t doing it for you anymore, watercolor pencils used in coloring books will significantly change what is possible during coloring time. If having more choice is what you need, try out your new watercolor pencils in your coloring books and see what happens!
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the different grades of watercolor paper?
There are 3 different grades. The first will be most common in watercolor books, the second is what most artists recommend as its cotton fiber count is higher, and the third is artisanal, handmade, and pricy but it’s also the best.
What’s the anatomy of a colored pencil vs a crayon?
Crayons are almost always wax-based with pigment throughout, and they leave a deposit of this wax in a colorful streak on the page. Colored pencils are also pigment suspended in wax, but the wooden core and the wax amount allow the pigment to be pinpointed and applied much differently than a crayon.
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