Today’s question comes from a reader who wants to know if there are better ways to do coloring book backgrounds. Here’s her question.
I’m getting bored with using chalk pastels for the background of my coloring book pages. What are some good techniques for using colored pencils to “fill in” large background areas? I’ve tried using multiple layers of colors and then burnishing them with a lighter color or a blending pencil, but that’s tedious and not very exciting-looking.
Thanks! Lori
Better Ways to Do Coloring Book Backgrounds
I have dabbled with coloring pages once or twice, and most of those experiments were my own designs. Those designs don’t have much in the form of background.
The one or two coloring pages I’ve colored from other artists also didn’t have much background.
So I don’t have a good answer from personal experience.
Fortunately, Sarah Renae Clark and I have exchanged information and even blog posts more than once over the years. Her specialty is coloring books and pages. She designs her own pages, publishes her books, and offers a lot of other products for coloring enthusiasts.
So I asked Sarah what she would recommend for interesting, fun and FAST backgrounds.
She replied quickly, as I knew she would. But she didn’t give me a written answer; she did something better.
She gave me a YouTube link! Here it is.
The video focuses primarily on Sarah’s experiments with masking markers and films, but she also talks about other ideas for creating interesting backgrounds.
She works with a variety of wet and dry media in this video so you may very well find your next new background method here.
If not, be sure to check out the rest of her video collection.
More Ideas for Backgrounds
I’ve also written a couple of posts on different ways to draw backgrounds. These posts are written from the standpoint of fine art, but they may also work for colored pencils. A couple of those posts are:
Fast and Easy Backgrounds for Colored Pencil Drawings and Making Dark Backgrounds with Watercolor Pencils.
You may have to adjust your techniques slightly if you’re not drawing on artist grade paper, but I hope these two articles will at least give you some ideas!
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