Coloured pencils outdoors: choosing pencils and paper

Coloured pencils are the most straightforward way to sketch outdoors: no water, no drying time, no spills. You sit down, open your book and start. That's exactly why it's worth making two conscious decisions at the beginning – which pencils and which paper. Both determine the result more than any technique that follows.

Wax or oil: two characters

Most coloured pencils have a wax-based binder. Their cores are soft, release plenty of pigment and cover strongly after a single stroke. That's wonderful when you want to fill areas: a house wall, a canopy, the sky above the rooftops. The price for it: the point blunts quickly, the core breaks more easily, and with many layers a slight, milky wax bloom forms on the surface, making the colours look dull.

Oil-based coloured pencils are harder. They hold their point longer, deliver fine, precise lines and can be layered in thin coats without the surface closing up. Less colour reaches the paper per stroke, so you need more passes for a saturated area. For architecture, rows of windows, railings and lettering they're the calmer choice.

You don't have to choose: a mixed handful works well if you save the soft, waxy pencils for the final layers. The other way round, a hard pencil often just glides over a waxy area without gripping.

The third family: watercolour pencils

Watercolour pencils look like ordinary coloured pencils and behave like them when dry, just usually a little chalkier and paler. Their trick only comes with water: a damp brush dissolves the pigment, and the hatching turns into an even wash. That's a chapter of its own, and we'll devote a whole module to it later. For a start it's enough to know that these pencils exist – don't buy a second complete set right away, at most three or four individual pencils to try out.

Twelve pencils are enough

Large sets with 72 colours look tempting and slow you down outdoors, because you spend more time searching than drawing. A deliberately small selection gets you further: one warm and one cool yellow, one warm and one cool red, one warm and one cool blue. With these six you can mix almost any hue a street offers you by layering. Add burnt sienna and ochre – the two earth tones that plaster, brick, wood and sandstone are made of. A dark, deep blue like indigo takes care of the shadows, a mid grey helps with asphalt, metal and rainy skies. That leaves room for a green of your choice and a white pencil, which you'll need on toned paper for the highlights.

What's missing is black – deliberately. Black coloured-pencil shadows look dull, like a hole in the picture. If instead you lay indigo over burnt sienna, you get an equally deep dark that keeps its colour and tips warm or cool depending on pressure. So carrying one single pencil less immediately improves your pictures.

The paper has a say

Coloured pencil needs tooth, that is a slight roughness in which the pigment can catch. Paper between 120 and 160 grams per square metre with a slightly rough surface easily takes five or six layers before it's saturated. That's exactly what this technique lives on. Very smooth paper, by contrast, gives you finer, cleaner lines but saturates quickly: after two layers the pencil just slides across the surface. For getting started, an A5 sketchbook with slightly rough paper is the safe choice.

Toned paper in grey or beige is the best trick this technique has to offer. The paper tone takes over the mid tone, so you save a whole layer and only work out shadows and highlights. On beige an old-town alley immediately feels warm, on grey a rainy day looks coherent – and a white pencil shines where it would be invisible on white paper.

Sharpener, extender, case

Take a handheld sharpener with a closed shavings container, otherwise you'll scatter waste over the bench or in your backpack. A pencil extender doubles the lifespan of your favourite colours, because those are exactly the ones that get short first. And transport your pencils in a case with individual elastic loops rather than a pouch where they knock against each other loose. Broken cores aren't visible from the outside – you only notice when the pencil keeps falling apart as you sharpen it. A case for around CHF 15 to 25 will save you pencils worth several times that.

Exercise

Set a timer for 15 minutes. In the first seven minutes, draw a colour chart: for each of your pencils a small patch about two by three centimetres, in which you show three pressure levels from left to right – very light touch, medium, then firm. Write the name of the colour next to it. This chart stays in the front of your sketchbook and replaces all searching.

In the remaining eight minutes, find a single house wall at the window or out on the street and draw it using only ochre and indigo. Ochre light and flat for the wall, indigo for the shadow side, the window recesses and the line beneath the eaves. No black, no other colours – just see how deep these two can go together.