Colored pencil does not work well on a paint by number canvas, and it is worth knowing that before you buy a set of pencils to try it.
The idea is appealing: the same numbered design, none of the water, brushes or drying time. But the surface is wrong, and almost nothing written about this mentions it.
The surface problem
Colored pencil works by abrading a little pigment off the tip onto a surface with fine tooth. Good pencil paper has a very slight texture that shaves the color off and holds it.
A paint by number canvas is primed cotton. It has a coarse woven texture and a slick gesso coating, which is precisely the opposite of what you need. The pencil skips across the top of the weave, depositing color on the raised threads and skipping the dips, and the result is patchy and pale no matter how hard you press.
Pressing harder makes it worse. You get a shiny, waxy, compressed surface, more visible weave, and eventually a broken pencil tip.
What to do instead
Use paper. If you want the numbered-design experience in pencil, work on paper rather than canvas. Our kits include an 11 by 17 printout of the design, and it is a far better surface for pencil than the canvas is. You are not obliged to use it only as a reference.
Printed color-by-number sheets designed for pencils and markers also exist, and being paper, they behave properly.
Or use pencils for the detail and paint the rest. This is the combination that genuinely works. Paint the canvas normally, let it cure fully, then use a sharp colored pencil over the dry acrylic for fine touches: individual hairs, grass blades, whiskers, the glint in an eye. Dry acrylic takes pencil far better than raw primed canvas does, because the paint layer has a finer, more even tooth.
Test on an edge first, since it varies with how thickly the paint went on. Seal the finished piece afterward if you have used much pencil, because pencil sits on the surface and will smudge.
Wax-based and oil-based pencils
This gets stated backwards constantly, so here it is correctly.
Wax-based pencils are the softer of the two. They lay down color quickly and creamily, blend easily, and give rich coverage fast. The trade-offs: the cores are fragile and break if dropped, they are harder to keep sharp for fine detail, and they are prone to wax bloom, a faint hazy film that can rise to the surface of a finished piece over weeks. Bloom wipes off gently with a soft cloth and a light spray of fixative prevents it returning.
Oil-based pencils are harder. They hold a point much better, which makes them the choice for fine detail, and they do not bloom. They build up more slowly, so covering a large area takes longer.
You can use both together, and many people do: oil-based for the drawing and detail, wax-based to fill and blend.
Whichever you choose, buy artist-grade rather than the sets sold for children. The difference is pigment load, and it is the difference between a color that goes down richly in one pass and one that stays chalky however many layers you add.
The techniques worth learning
Layering. The fundamental one. Build color in several light passes rather than one heavy one. Light pressure keeps the tooth of the paper open so it can accept the next layer, and layered color has a depth that a single flat application never achieves. Press hard on the first pass and you have filled the tooth and nothing more will stick.
Burnishing. The finishing move. Once the layers are down, go over them with heavy pressure using a colorless blender or a light pencil. This crushes the pigment into the surface, eliminates the paper texture, and leaves a smooth polished finish. Do it last, because nothing more can be layered on afterward.
Circular shading, sometimes called scumbling. Small overlapping circles rather than back-and-forth strokes. It produces a far more even surface with no visible stroke direction, and it is the standard way to fill an area smoothly.
Cross-hatching. Sets of parallel lines with a second set laid across them at an angle. Varying the spacing and the number of layers varies the tone, and it leaves visible texture, which suits fabric, wood and shadow.
Stippling. Dots. Denser and closer for darker areas, sparser for lighter. Slow, and excellent for gradual transitions and for texture like stone or sand.
What pencils do better than paint
Fine detail. A sharp pencil beats the finest brush, and single strands of hair or fur are achievable in a way they are not with a numbered kit's brushes.
Stopping and starting. No drying time, no palette to lose, no brushes to rinse. Pick it up for ten minutes and put it down.
Portability and mess. No water, no spills, nothing to cover the table for. This genuinely matters if you work in a shared room or want to take it with you.
What they do worse
Covering large areas. Filling a big sky in pencil is slow and hard on the hand. Paint does in two minutes what pencil does in forty.
Opacity. Colored pencil is semi-transparent. It cannot cover a dark printed number the way acrylic can, so on a numbered design the lines tend to remain faintly visible.
Corrections. Limited. A kneaded eraser lifts a little from paper, but burnished pencil is effectively permanent.
A note on the history
You will read that numbered designs were a technique used by the old masters. They were not. The format was conceived in 1949 by Max Klein, who owned the Palmer Paint Company in Detroit, and the commercial artist Dan Robbins, and reached shops as Craft Master in 1951. Robbins said an anecdote about Leonardo handing numbered patterns to apprentices gave him the idea, and that anecdote has since been repeated as though it were documented practice. It is not.
The short version
Colored pencils and numbered designs go together well on paper and poorly on canvas. Use the 11 by 17 printout that comes in the kit if you want to work in pencil, or keep the pencils for detail work over paint that has fully cured.
And if what appeals is the layering and blending rather than the pencils specifically, those same skills apply directly to a canvas. We cover them in paint by numbers blending and in making a finished canvas look hand-painted.
Our catalog is licensed original paintings, each with an 11 by 17 printout in the box, and you can have a design made from your own photograph with our custom paint by numbers service.
