Do You Like Pencil Sketches?

Do they have to make a mess?

I actually don’t consider pencil sketches a favorite thing - and that is mostly because my love of color is over the top.

That being said, 99% of my artwork on paper or canvas starts with a pencil sketch - rough at first, and then refined until it is no longer rough at all. Then, I usually add ink lines and paint, and erase the pencil.

But sometimes, the pencil sketch is really pretty, and I put off adding the ink and color - like for 8 years in this case!?!

Even though I always work with a 3H pencil to minimize smearing, you can see here that smearing happens anyway.

This has been my problem with thinking of pencil sketches as finished art in my sketchbook. I don’t like spray fixatives, hair spray is sticky, and smudging looks dirty to me.

So, for a very long time, I have been looking for something that would have a pencil sketch look, but be permanent and waterproof. I tried gray inks and markers and colored pencils, but the look was not the same. I also wanted to be able to erase.

If you know me, you know I am an unstoppable problem solver. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, I never let it go until I find a solution - especially when it comes to art processes, which is part of what makes me so delightfully entertaining (grin).

And, I found a solution to this problem.

Crayola Erasable Colored Pencils

What? Yes - and there are so many great things about them.

They are soft enough to allow a sketchy pencil look and hard enough to make a more defined line if desired. Shading can be done with a soft touch, and they erase without a trace using the matching color eraser on the end of the pencil (other erasers too, but the onboard erasers work best.

They do not smear and are waterproof, so you can use watercolor over the sketches if you prefer. Some of the shading on this pot was done with the brown pencil and some with the watercolor.

They also blend very nicely together

Of course, these are not to be compared to artist quality colored pencils for colored pencil art, but for interesting pencil sketches with none of the smearing and offset problems - or for sketches done in color to be painted over, these have real possibilities. A set of 50 colors is about $15 on Amazon:

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