Dark Colors over Light Colors with Colored Pencils

Do you always have to use dark colors over light colors with colored pencils? If there are exceptions to that rule, what are they?

Let’s take a look at that.

When Dark Colors over Light Colors is the Best Choice

A rule of thumb for layering color is to start with light colors and work into the darker colors if you’re working on traditional paper. When I say “traditional paper” I mean smooth papers like Stonehenge, Bristol, and other similar drawing papers.

This is the usual procedure because it’s very difficult to lighten colors once they’re on the paper, but it’s easy to darken them.

Smooth papers have enough tooth to accept multiple layers of color, but not enough tooth to allow you to add light colors over dark colors and make an impact. That’s because the tooth fills up too quickly. You can add light colors over dark, but the most you’ll be able to do is lighten an area a little bit.

When you work on papers of this type, it’s usually better to begin with light colors and light pressure. Build color and value layer by layer. Continue using light pressure as long as possible, and work toward the darker colors.

That doesn’t mean you have to use the same color or colors for the first layers on every part of the drawing. I have started with just one or two colors in the past, but what I usually do is use the lightest color for each area. The lightest color in the lighter areas is different than the lightest color in the shadows, for example.

In this portrait, I started the brown parts of the horse with light to medium value earth tones and used Black applied with light pressure in the mane and forelock. At this stage, I’ve added enough layers to begin developing the values. I used light pressure for all the work.

You’ll notice that I didn’t add any color at all to the highlight areas. That’s also a good practice with colored pencils when working on smooth paper.

The black background was drawn with a couple of layers of brown India ink and several layers of dark colors. I chose to do the background first because I wanted to see if it would work before doing the horse.

When You Can Layer Light Colors over Dark Colors

Another rule of thumb is that the more texture your paper has, the more likely it is that you will be able to add bright or light colors over dark colors.

I’ve worked on 240 grit UART paper, which is very coarse. I’ve also worked on Pastelmat and was able to add bright highlights to dark areas on both papers. That’s because the paper had so much tooth that it was still able to “grab” color even with a lot of layers on the paper already.

This is a detail from Path to the Blue Mountains. All of the highlights in the mountains, hills, grass, and trees were added over darker colors. This piece is on 240 grit UArt with a lot of surface texture.

I have also had good success adding bright highlights over dark colors on Pastelmat. That includes Charcoal Grey Pastelmat, which is quite dark.

In this piece, I added the light-colored branches to the bushes on the left after drawing the sky. I also added highlights to the bushes and grass after all the other colors were in place. Pastelmat is ideal for this kind of color application.

The Bottom Line

Whether or not you can add light colors over dark colors in your work depends on the paper you choose.

What do I suggest?

Do some experimenting with your favorite pencils and paper. You don’t have to experiment on actual drawings, though you may if you wish. Color swatches work just as well for this sort of experimentation and you can try different color combinations without worrying about ruining a drawing.

You can also keep those swatches for future reference. What could be better than that?

Once you see how your pencils and paper interact, you’ll be better able to decide when to try adding light colors over dark colors.

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