Free Watercolor Article. Watercolor vs. Colored Pencil

Watercolor Compared To Colored Pencils

How is watercolor similar and different from colored pencils? Let's take a look.

Keep in mind that my main painting medium for over 2 decades has been watercolor. I do have a decent amount of experience with all the mediums I am comparing, however my expertise is in watercolor. I feel I have worked with these other mediums enough to have a good knowledge about them, but my experience with them is far less than with watercolor.

This article is not meant to be a judgement of which mediums are better. It is simply a comparison of similarities and differences to help you perhaps decide which one might suit your next choice for learning.

What Do They Have In Common?

You work from light to dark. This is quite different from the other mediums we are comparing. With watercolor and colored pencil it is almost always mandatory that you put your lightest tones down first, and then darker tones over those. This is mainly because of the next point...

They are VERY transparent by nature. It is true that other mediums can be MADE to be transparent, but watercolor and colored pencil are very transparent without any modification at all. Because of this, you cannot put down a darker tone and then "cover it" with a lighter tone. The dark will almost always show through. This is the reason you must work from light to dark, and it greatly affects all aspects of working with these two mediums.

You don't use white to lighten colors or to paint white. Typically, the whitest white you get with watercolor and colored pencil is created by the white of the paper. Therefore, you have to plan ahead and leave these white areas unpainted. To lighten colors in watercolor, you add water. To lighten colors in colored pencil, you choose a lighter colored pencil. Now I can hear you saying: "Well what are those white watercolor pigments for and what are those white colored pencils for?" Most watercolor artist don't use white pigment at all. Those who do use it to alter the character of colors rather than lighten them. For example, adding white to a color can make it have more of a pastel appearance. In colored pencil, the white pencil is used mostly for blending and for a smoothing/glossing technique called "burnishing".

They are the most difficult mediums to fix mistakes. Now, "most difficult" doesn't mean "impossible" or even "impractical". It just means the hardest of the mediums compared here. Many people say that watercolor is the hardest medium to fix mistakes. But those people are not considering colored pencil. Colored pencil is actually harder to fix mistakes than watercolor. This is because most of the time watercolor can be re-wetted with plain water and then softened or even lifted out (to differing degrees depending upon several factors). Colored pencil can do that, but it is more difficult and you need special tools or materials such as alcohol to do it. Contrary to many beginner's thinking, true colored pencil cannot be erased (except moderately with an special electric eraser and/or solvents).

What Are The Differences?

Watercolor is a painting medium. Colored Pencil is a drawing medium. Pretty obvious, but important to note.
Blending is quite different. To blend colors or create a soft edge in watercolor, you mostly use an osmotic process of controlling the wet mixes and controlling the behavior of the water in them. An example is "fading" a painted edge with clear water to make the edge soft. The paint literally "fades into nothing". In colored pencil, softening and blending is typically done with an "optical" method in which the colors don't physically fade or mix, but you create the illusion that they are doing this. An example is blending two color edges by "crosshatching" or by controlling the pressure of your stroke.

You don't physically mix colors in colored pencil. If you want a new color in colored pencil, you most often have to use a new colored pencil that is the correct color. You can also optically mix colors on the paper by layering them, but there is no real combining of colors to create a totally new color with it's own properties. In watercolor, you can mix an infinite amount of colors with their own properties by mixing pigments together on the palette or on the paper.

Watercolor is much, much faster. This is probably the biggest difference, because watercolor and colored pencil are at the extremes here. Watercolor lends itself to working very quickly, probably more quickly than any other medium. You can cover the entire sheet of paper with paint in a matter of seconds. Contrast that with colored pencil which is probably the slowest medium. Try covering an entire sheet of paper with colored pencil; you are going to be at it for quite a while! Because of the slow nature of colored pencil, many colored pencil artists work on a much smaller scale than other mediums.

Colored pencil lends itself toward extreme control. Watercolor lends itself to less control. Notice I used the phrase "lends itself". This doesn't mean that you can't lean either way with both mediums. But because in colored pencil you are working with a tiny sharp point, you generally have total control. With watercolor you "CAN" have a high level of control as well. You can use tiny, sharp brushes. But most of the painting, even detailed painting, in watercolor is done with larger brushes, with flowing washes. Control is usually gradually established as the painting progresses.