Today I’m sharing an exercise to practice color pencils techniques such as blending and burnishing. I find completing these forms to be so relaxing! It’s the type of practice that you can work on just alittle bit each day whenever you need a brain break!

I’m using Prismacolor brand pencils for this color grid.

In addition to a quality set of pencils, you’ll also need some grid paper (download free printable here).

Tutorial

Begin by figuring out the order of your pencils. You can do them in rainbow order, a random assortment, or whatever organization method makes sense to you. For my example, I used my pencils in the order that they came in the box!

Whatever order you choose is, make a note of it so you remember! It doesn’t matter how many colors you have because you’ll start back over at pencil #1 when you reach your last one.

Starting with pencil #1, lightly color the entire first column from top to bottom.

The key here is to color LIGHTLY. We’re going to be building layers of color and if you start off too heavy, you can’t get the blended effect of the multiple layers.

Once you’ve got one light colored layer done with pencil #1 in column #1, then you’ll move onto to pencil #2 and column #2. Repeat this step until all the columns are filled. (If you have more columns than pencils, simple circle back around to pencil#1)

After all your columns are filled in lightly, you’ll begin the same process with the rows. Lightly color row #1 with pencil #1. Row #2 with pencil #2. And so on.

When you’ve finished your rows, go back to the columns again.

This is an exercise in patience as well! I think, each of my boxes have 10 layers of color!

After enough layers, you’ll see your boxes begin to look glossy (burnished) and that’s when you know you’re do

Not only is it a relaxing coloring exercise, it produces a pretty cool effect, AND it’s a great reference tool for future color mixing!

Have you ever done a color wheel or color reference exercise that you love? I would live to hear about!

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