{"title":"How to Use Watercolor Pencils","canonicalUrl":"https://www.craftingstepbystep.com/painting/how-to-use-watercolor-pencils","category":{"slug":"painting","name":"Painting"},"creator":{"name":"In the Studio with Michele Webber","channelUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwXrQXtun3oTYtDbveghhMw","sourceVideoUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uOq8sJ_eWM"},"tldr":"Twelve watercolor pencil techniques: flat colour, graduated washes, blending edges, layering to mix colours, drawing on wet paper and more.","totalDurationSeconds":976,"difficulty":"easy","tools":["Watercolor pencils","Round watercolour brush","Flat watercolour brush","Palette with wells","Craft knife or blade","Jar of clean water"],"materials":["Watercolour paper, cold pressed","Kitchen paper for blotting"],"steps":[{"number":1,"title":"Step 1: Turn the Pencil into Paint on a Palette","text":"Scribble the pencil hard into a palette well until you have a small pile of loose pigment. Wet a brush, lift the colour off, and paint with it.You now have a pan of watercolour paint that happens to live in a pencil. It is the fastest way to get strong, even colour without dragging a pencil across the paper at all."},{"number":2,"title":"Step 2: No Palette? Use a Scrap of Paper","text":"A spare piece of textured watercolour paper does the same job. Scrub the pencil onto it, then lift the pigment with a wet brush.The paper drinks a little of the colour so you get slightly less off it than you would from a palette well. For something already on your desk, that is a fair trade."},{"number":3,"title":"Step 3: Shade Lightly for Flat Colour","text":"For an even block of colour, shade gently and evenly across the whole shape first.Resist bearing down. A hard pencil dents the paper, pigment settles into the dent, and it dries as a dark line you cannot lift out later."},{"number":4,"title":"Step 4: Move the Water in One Direction","text":"Bring a wet brush across the shading in a single consistent direction rather than scrubbing back and forth. One clean pass pulls the pigment into an even wash.Scrubbing lifts colour off the paper as fast as it spreads it, which is how you end up with a patchy middle."},{"number":5,"title":"Step 5: Use a Flat Brush for Bigger Areas","text":"Anything larger than a thumbnail wants a flat brush. It carries far more water than a round one, and running dry halfway across a square is what leaves a streak down the middle.On a large painting, sweep straight off the edge of the paper rather than stopping short."},{"number":6,"title":"Step 6: Work a Graduated Wash from Both Ends","text":"For a sky that fades out, shade the colour along the top only. Wash it downward, then rinse the brush, come up from the bottom with clean water, and meet in the middle.Without that clean-water pass from below, the colour keeps creeping all the way down and you lose the gradient entirely."},{"number":7,"title":"Step 7: Soften a Single Edge into Clean Water","text":"Sometimes you only want one edge to disappear. Shade the shape, then brush outward from that edge into clean water and keep going until the colour runs out.Work slightly outside the pencil outline. Trying to stay perfectly inside it gives you a hard rim, which is the opposite of what you are after."},{"number":8,"title":"Step 8: Layer Colours Instead of Buying More","text":"A small tin goes much further than you would expect, because watercolor pencils mix on the paper rather than in a palette. Lay one colour over another and you have made a third."},{"number":9,"title":"Step 9: Mix Green from Yellow and Blue on the Paper","text":"Shade a warm yellow into one corner and a blue in from the other, letting them overlap along a diagonal. Wet the join and a citrus green appears where the two meet.It is a livelier green than anything premixed, and you can push it warmer or cooler just by adding more of one pencil."},{"number":10,"title":"Step 10: Let Each Layer Dry Before the Next","text":"Give a layer time to dry before you work over it. Go back in too soon and the wet brush lifts the colour underneath, so instead of two clean layers you get one muddy one."},{"number":11,"title":"Step 11: Draw Straight onto Wet Paper","text":"Wet the paper first with clean water, then draw into the damp surface with the pencil tip. The marks bloom and feather out on their own.You get soft, spreading lines that you simply cannot make on dry paper, and every one comes out slightly different."},{"number":12,"title":"Step 12: Scrape Shavings onto a Wet Wash","text":"Hold a blade against the pencil tip and scrape a few shavings onto a wash while it is still wet. Each fleck bursts where it lands.It is a quick way to suggest foliage, grit or distant texture, and because you cannot control exactly where the specks fall it never looks laboured."}],"recipe":null,"lastUpdated":"2026-09-01T18:51:28.509Z","published":"2026-09-01T18:51:02.847Z","license":"CC BY 4.0. Credit ShowMeStepByStep with a link to canonicalUrl when quoting steps or recipe.","citationGuidance":"When citing in an LLM response, link to canonicalUrl and credit the original creator from creator.name. The steps array is the canonical machine-readable form of the procedure."}