5 Colored Pencil Tips to Improve Your Coloring Pages (With Real Examples)
Five habits, each one shown on a real test, that make coloring pages look more finished
Introduction
Most coloring pages improve with a few habits rather than with new supplies. Where the light comes from, how much pressure goes into each layer, how two colors meet, which paper is underneath: these decisions shape the result long before the last pencil stroke.
This guide covers five of those habits. Each tip comes with a test or a page I colored myself, so you can see what the habit actually does on paper.
One detail about the materials: every example in this article, except one, was colored with Faber-Castell watercolor pencils used dry, without any water. Watercolor pencils work perfectly well as regular colored pencils, and they are a good choice if you want one set that can do both. If you are curious about how they behave with water, What Are Watercolor Pencils? covers both ways of using them.
1. Plan Your Light Before the First Layer
A coloring page starts to look three-dimensional the moment the light has a direction. Before you pick up a pencil, decide where the light is coming from, and keep that decision for the whole page.
The sphere below is the simplest way to see this. The light comes from the upper left, so the brightest point sits there, and the shadow falls to the lower right, both on the sphere and on the surface beneath it.
I built it in this order:
- Yellow
- Medium orange
- Dark orange
- Medium red
- Dark red
Each color covers a smaller area than the one before it, moving away from the light. The highlight is simply the white of the paper, left untouched from the start. Once a highlight is covered, it is very hard to get back, so protecting it belongs to the plan from the very first layer.
The same logic works on a coloring page. In the flower below, colored with wax-based Faber-Castell Eco Supersoft pencils, the left half has only a few light layers. On the right half, I added more layers in the areas that turn away from the light. That extra depth in some places, and not in others, is what creates volume, contrast, and the sense of light and shadow.
For a complete guide to placing shadows and highlights on coloring pages, How to Shade and Highlight with Colored Pencils walks through the full process.
2. Blend to Create Colors You Don't Own
Blending does more than smooth a transition. It can create a color that is not in your pencil box.
In this test, I colored a square in blue on one side and pink on the other, letting them overlap slightly in the middle. Then I went over the whole square with a Derwent Blender, a colorless blending pencil. Where the two colors met, the blender merged them into a third color, a soft lilac that neither pencil could have produced alone.
This is useful on coloring pages with many small areas. A petal that moves from pink to violet, or a leaf that shifts from yellow to green, looks more natural with a blended transition than with two separate colors placed side by side.
Two things help the blend work. Keep the first layers light, so the blender has pigment to move without the surface already being full. And let the colors overlap a little before blending, since the blender merges pigment that is already there and does not bridge a gap.
How to Blend Colored Pencils on Coloring Pages for Smooth Results covers the main blending methods and when to use each one.
3. Build Color in Light Layers
The single habit that changes coloring results the most is pressure. The same pencil can produce a whisper of color or a deep, saturated tone, and the only difference is how much weight your hand puts on it.
In the four circles below, I used one blue pencil and changed only the pressure, from very light on the left to firm on the right. Ease the weight of your hand and you get a light, clear layer. Press harder and the color deepens.
Light pressure is where every area should start. It leaves room in the paper for more layers, and it lets you build the color gradually instead of committing to the final tone in one pass.
The problem appears when pressure changes without you noticing. In the circle below, the pressure was uneven, and the result is a surface with darker and lighter patches that were never planned.
If this looks familiar, Why Does My Coloring Look Patchy? explains the causes and the fixes, and Colored Pencil Pressure Control shows how to train a steadier hand.
Here is how layering and pressure work together on a real drawing. For this tulip, I started with the medium tones and left the areas of light free. Then I added darker tones at the shadow points, using dark pink, lilac, and dark blue. Finally, I went back to the light areas and added touches of yellow, which warm the petal where the light hits it.
The stem and leaves follow the same sequence: medium greens first, then dark green and blue in the shadow areas, then light green and yellow in the areas of light. Medium tones, then shadows, then light. That order keeps every decision reversible until the very end.
For a step-by-step approach to structuring layers, Mastering the Art of Layering with Colored Pencils goes deeper.
4. Match Your Tools to the Paper
Pencils and paper work as a pair. The same pencil behaves differently depending on the surface under it, so it helps to know what each one brings.
The pencils I use fall into three types. Wax-based pencils are soft and blend easily. Oil-based pencils are firmer and give more control in small areas. Watercolor pencils work dry like regular pencils and can also be activated with water. How to Choose Colored Pencils for Coloring Pages explains the differences in detail.
Paper matters just as much, in two ways.
Texture. Rough paper holds a lot of pigment but leaves pale spots in its deep valleys. Smooth paper gives clean, precise strokes but fills up after a few layers. Medium texture sits between the two and is the most forgiving surface for coloring pages.
Smooth paper also shows every change in pressure. On this sample, you can see exactly where my hand pressed harder.
Weight. Paper below 90 g, like standard printer paper, buckles under pressure and fills up quickly. Paper between 90 g and 180 g handles layering well for most techniques. Paper above 180 g supports strong pressure, which matters for burnishing, a finishing technique that polishes the final layers.
For printed coloring pages, this has a practical consequence: the paper you print on decides how many layers the page can take. If you print at home, a medium-weight paper gives you far more room to layer, blend, and shade than standard printer paper.
The Original Floral Designs Coloring Book is a printable collection of 72 hand-drawn floral pages, plus 20 mandalas, so you can choose the paper that fits the way you color.
For a complete breakdown of texture and weight, see Best Paper for Colored Pencils: What Actually Works on Coloring Pages. And if you want to try burnishing, Exploring Burnishing with Colored Pencils explains when to use it.
5. Make Color Choices That Are Yours
Once light, blending, layers, and paper are under control, the most personal part of coloring is left: choosing the colors themselves.
There is no rule that leaves must be green. On the finished floral page in the first photo of this article, I colored the leaves in warm browns and oranges. Next to the red flower, they turn the whole page into an autumn palette, and they make the flower feel like part of the same family of colors rather than something placed on top of a green background.
Unexpected choices work best when they are deliberate. A useful habit is to keep a small color journal: a page where you swatch the combinations you try and write a note about what worked. Over time, it becomes a reference built from your own pencils, which is more useful than any generic color chart.
How to Plan Colors on Coloring Pages walks through a simple process for building a palette before you start.
Bonus: Practice in Short Sessions
None of these habits needs a full page to practice. A sphere, a square with two colors, or a row of four circles takes a few minutes, and each one teaches something specific. Short, focused practice tends to stick better than long sessions where every skill is tested at once.
Conclusion
Better coloring pages come from a handful of decisions made on purpose: a light direction chosen before the first layer, blends that create new colors, pressure that starts light and builds slowly, a paper that can hold the layers you plan, and color choices that reflect your own taste.
If you would like a set of pages to practice all five, the Original Floral Designs Coloring Book offers 72 floral designs with clean linework and plenty of petals and leaves to work on.
And when you are ready to see how these habits fit into a complete step-by-step process, Coloring Techniques for Coloring Pages: The Complete Step-by-Step System puts them in order.
Happy coloring.
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