A practical guide from Sketchso

Colored Pencil Techniques, Shown on One Cat Portrait from Guide to Finish

Colored pencil is slow and hard to undo, so the order you work in matters more than any single technique. Instead of describing techniques in the abstract, this guide follows one tabby cat portrait through five stages, photographed on the drawing board. The pencils on the table are Faber-Castell Polychromos. The pale lines you can see on the unfinished side are the transferred guide.

By Sketchso Team · Reviewed October 26, 2026 · 5 min read

Start from a guide light enough to disappear

In the first photo, look at the left half of the face. The outline of the ear, the head and the second eye are there, but faint and grey. They are light enough to read while drawing and light enough to vanish once colour goes on top. That is the only job a guide has in colored pencil. If you can see your guide lines clearly from across the room, they will probably show through your lighter layers too.

Colored pencil is a wax- or oil-based medium, and it does not erase cleanly once it is layered. Graphite underneath can also smear into light colours and turn them grey. Keep the transfer as light as you can still see, and make every correction to the outline before the first coloured layer.

Colored pencil cat portrait in progress: right eye, ear and part of the forehead are coloured, the rest of the face is a faint grey traced outline — Stage 1. One eye and the ear are rendered. The rest of the face, including the second eye and the whiskers, is still only a faint transferred guide.

Finish one eye first and judge everything against it

The artist did not cover the whole face in a first layer. The right eye is close to finished in stage 1, complete with its dark pupil, reflected light and sharp rim. Doing this early gives you the darkest dark and the sharpest edge in the whole picture, so every later value has something to be compared against. It also tells you quickly whether the likeness is working: if the eye looks alive, the portrait is worth continuing.

The highlight in the eye is bare paper, protected from the start rather than added with white pencil at the end. White pencil over coloured layers looks chalky and never gets back to the brightness of the paper.

Build fur by direction and many light layers

Compare stages 1 and 2. The forehead stripes and the cheek have filled in with short strokes that follow the direction of the fur, flicking outward from the nose and upward on the forehead. Each stroke is light. The darker areas come from more layers, not from pressing harder. Heavy pressure early flattens the paper’s tooth, and once the tooth is full, new layers slide off instead of building up.

Look at the bridge of the nose and the fur under the eye. There is warm colour under the greys: ochres and a muted pink. The pencils laid beside the drawing in stage 3 include Polychromos Beige red (132) and Light yellow ochre (183). A tabby that is “grey” in the photo is rarely drawn with grey pencils alone; warm undertones keep the fur from looking like graphite.

The same cat portrait with the nose, mouth and right cheek completed in colored pencil, the left side still a faint outline — Stage 2. The nose and muzzle are done. Fur strokes follow the direction of growth, and warm colour sits under the grey around the nose.

Cat portrait on a drawing board with six Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils laid beside it, including Beige red and Light yellow ochre — Stage 3. The chest is laid in. The pencils on the right are Faber-Castell Polychromos, including Beige red 132 and Light yellow ochre 183.

Reserve the whites and the second eye

Stage 4 is the most instructive photo. Almost all the fur is finished, yet the second eye is still a clean blank circle. Leaving it untouched means no stray strokes or graphite dust land in the area that must stay cleanest. It also lets the artist draw the second eye knowing exactly how dark the surrounding fur turned out, so the two eyes can be matched.

The white fur on the muzzle and chin works the same way. It is not white pencil. It is paper with a few light strokes on top, defined by the darker fur around it. In colored pencil you plan the lightest areas before you start, because you cannot get them back later.

Nearly finished cat portrait with all fur rendered and the left eye still an empty white circle — Stage 4. Nearly all the fur is finished, but the second eye is still blank paper. The left ear and the lower left edge are still only guide lines.

Blend, burnish and finish

Burnishing means pressing hard with a light colour or a colourless blender over earlier layers so the pigment fills the paper tooth and the surface turns smooth and slightly glossy. It is useful for eyes, noses and other smooth surfaces. It is a final step, because you cannot add much on top of a burnished area. In this portrait the fur keeps its tooth and texture, while the eyes and nose are smoother.

Solvents such as odourless mineral spirits, applied sparingly with a brush or paper stump, dissolve the binder and blend layers into a painterly underlayer. Test on scrap paper first, ventilate the room and let it dry before drawing over it.

Wax-based pencils can develop wax bloom: a cloudy film that forms on heavily layered areas after a few days. It wipes away with a soft cloth, and a fixative helps prevent it returning. Polychromos are oil-based, which makes bloom much less of an issue.

Finished colored pencil portrait of a grey tabby cat with green eyes and a pink nose — Stage 5. Finished. No guide line is visible: every transferred mark is covered by colour or was light enough to disappear into white fur.

Check lightfastness before you sell

Some pigments fade in daylight within a few years. Faber-Castell marks each Polychromos pencil with stars for lightfastness. Three stars means maximum lightfastness, equivalent to 7–8 on the Blue Wool Scale, the standard for light resistance. Two stars corresponds to 5–6 and one star to 3–4. Faber-Castell states that 102 of the 120 Polychromos colours carry three stars. Other brands publish similar charts using the Blue Wool Scale or ASTM ratings.

For anything you sell or give as a gift, check the rating of every colour you used, including the ones you touched only once. Pinks and purples are the usual weak spots across many brands. Framing behind UV-filtering glass helps, but it does not make a fugitive pigment permanent.

What changed at each stage of this portrait
Stage	Rendered	Still guide only
1	Right eye, right ear, part of the forehead	Left eye, nose, muzzle, chest, whiskers
2	Nose, mouth, right cheek	Left eye and left cheek, chest
3	Right side of chest and neck	Left eye and left side of the face
4	Left cheek, forehead, most of the chest	Left eye (left blank on purpose), left ear, lower left edge
5	Left eye, left ear, final adjustments	Nothing; guide fully covered

Read from the five process photographs in this guide.

Questions before you start

What paper works best for colored pencil?

A smooth-to-medium paper with enough tooth to hold many layers. Hot-pressed watercolour paper, Bristol vellum and dedicated colored pencil papers all work. Very smooth paper fills up after only a few layers.

How do I get white fur or whiskers on a dark background?

Plan them before you start and leave the paper bare, or press thin lines into the paper with an empty ballpoint or embossing tool before colouring so the pencil skips over them. White pencil added at the end looks chalky and is rarely bright enough.

Should I use graphite or colored pencil for my guide lines?

Use whichever you can make lightest. A very light graphite line is fine under darker colours. Under pale colours, a light colored pencil close to the final colour avoids greying.