After last week’s article published, I got a thank you and a question (or two) from a regular reader. She liked the tips on putting spots of color on black paper, but wanted to know how metallic pencils worked on black paper.
You know what? I didn’t know, so I told her I’d do some experimenting and let her know.
Metallic Colored Pencils on Black Paper
Three Experiments
The reader wanted to know the following:
Do metallic colored pencils look better on black paper than on white?
What happens if you layer them over watercolor?
I cut a few four by five inch pieces of Canson Mi-Teintes black and started drawing (and painting.) Here are my answers.
Do metallic colored pencils look better on black paper?
Yes, in my opinion. They show up better on black than they do on white. They don’t look any more metallic, but the color is good.
I used Prismacolor Soft Core Silver, Gold, and Copper to draw the following tree study. The center tree is silver, the tree on the left is gold, and the tree on the right is copper. I used the paper color for shadows, and drew highlights with medium or heavier pressure and multiple layers. The middle values are the result of lighter pressure and fewer layers.
Just so you could see what white looks like applied the same way, I added some snowflakes. (You can’t blame me. We had snow this past week, and it was lovely!)
You probably can’t tell the colors are metallic, but if I hold the drawing a certain way against the light, there is a sparkle. That’s kind of neat.
What happens when you use metallic colored pencils over watercolor pencil.
Since I don’t have artist-grade watercolors and since the watercolors I have dry slick, I tried Faber-Castell watercolor pencils. The set I have includes white, so I drew the trees with that, then used a damp brush to activate it.
I didn’t have to pick up a metallic colored pencil to know this wasn’t going to work. As soon as the color got wet, it disappeared into the paper. Canson Mi-Teintes is pretty absorbent, so I should have anticipated this. I let the paper dry, then went over it again. The results were only slightly better.
When the paper dried, I added metallic silver, gold and copper to the trees. That turned out okay, but the color looked a lot better (in my opinion) when put straight on the black paper. However, the white added a little bit more to the drawing as a light value and that made the trees look more solid.
Again with the snowflakes. This time I used the three metallic colors along with white to put in the snow. Even those little dots show up better than the metallic colors on white watercolor pencil.
What happens when you use metallic colored pencils over watercolor.
Since I’m a glutton for punishment and was having fun, I got out those cheap watercolors and painted another tree. When the paper was thoroughly dry, I tried to put metallic color over it. As expected, I couldn’t get much colored pencil to stick to the watercolor.
However, I could lay down colored pencil next to some of the painted shapes, and I also added some twigs with colored pencil. The result was surprisingly pleasing!
The final touch was more snowflakes with all three metallic colors and white.
Conclusion
In my experiments, metallic colored pencils performed quite well on black paper. At this point, I suggest using them without a white under drawing or painting, but better quality watercolor paint might produced better results.
It’s worth a try, anyway.
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Carrie, I have successfully used white pan pastels on black and then added colored pencil over the pastel. Havenytried metallic though. I suspect you would get better results with the watercolor if there was such a thing as black watercolor paper. Thanks for the experiment.
I used some cheaper Crayola metallic pencils experimenting like you and like you say, when you turn black paper just right in light it has a nice ”sparkle” to it. I have also used some fine point Sharpie paint markers before too and they really come out pretty bright for the most part. Wish I could show you pictures of what I’ve done.
Thank you so much for exploring my questions about using metallic pencils on black paper. Along that same line, I have some excellent watercolor paints in 5 shades of highly metallic gold and one metallic white. They are called Gansai Tambi Starry Colors. After your experiment I am now tempted to lay down color with this paint on black paper myself and see if I can get any better results with the colored metallic pencils layered on top. Then I will try it on white paper as well.