How to start your art journey...

 

🎨✨ 14 Things No One Told Me About Colour Pencils (But Should Have) ✨🖍️

I didn’t learn any of these tips from the thousands of tutorials I watched. I learned them through mistakes, eye sores and sketchbook tragedies. Now I’m sharing them so you don’t have to suffer like I did. 💔

1️⃣ Buy sketchbooks with 100 sheets, not 100 pages 📖—and make sure they have butter paper separators 🧈📄.

  • Art supply companies like to trick you—100 pages = 50 sheets. 😤

  • Butter paper prevents pigment transfer and keeps your sketchbook looking ✨clean✨ and professional.

2️⃣ Don’t make more than 5 layers if you're using cheap pencils 🚫✏️

  • Budget pencils = hard cores, waxy textures, and low blendability.

  • After 5 layers, your sketchbook turns into sandpaper 😬💀

3️⃣ Don’t buy professional pencils immediately 💸❌

  • Start with Brutfuner—insanely affordable 💰 but shockingly good quality 🌈

  • Skip the expensive brands until you know your technique and style 🧠🖌️

4️⃣ Blend with a Q-tip at the end of a drawing instead of burnishing with a white pencil 👀🧻

  • Burnishing with a pencil ruins layers and dulls colours 😩

  • Q-tips (dry or slightly damp) give smooth blends without destroying texture ✨🌀

5️⃣ Listen to music while drawing 🎶🎧🖍️

6️⃣ Don’t colour large areas with pencils 😮‍💨🖍️

  • Use markers (alcohol-based or brush pens) for base layers 🖊️🎨

  • Then layer pencils on top. Saves time ⏳, money 💸, and sanity 🧘

7️⃣ Buy a 72-colour pencil set — it’s the Goldilocks zone 🎯🎨

  • 12 is too few 😢 | 120 is too overwhelming 😵‍💫 | 72 is just right ✅

  • Enough shades to work with, not so many you forget what you own 🙈

8️⃣ Use the real grid method, not that pixelated fake tracing hack 🗺️📐

  • Grid = accurate proportions ✍️📏

  • It's not cheating. It’s strategy 🧠🧩

9️⃣ Draw things that are personal to you 💖🖼️

  • Moodboards about your life 🧠📚, book cover redesigns 📖🎨, dream scenes ☁️💭, pages from your novel 📚

  • Art is emotional 😭 | Art is storytelling 📖

  • If it doesn’t mean something to you, it's not art in its truest form💔

🔟 Don’t buy a cheap white pencil ⚪🚫 Get a white Gelly Roll and a white acrylic marker with an expensive white pencil ✅🖊️

  • Cheap white pencils are weak 💀 (good quality ones though are absolutely necessary)

  • Gelly Rolls = crisp highlights 💡 | Acrylic markers = bold accents 🎯

  • That’s all you need for pro-level shine ✨💥

1️⃣1️⃣ Go from light to dark. This is colour pencil, not painting 🌗🖍️

  • Colour pencils are transparent 🌫️

  • Build layers gradually 🌈 | Don’t smudge your soul with black too soon 😭🖤

1️⃣2️⃣ Don't expect your sketchbooks to look perfect 📓😤

  • If you aim for aesthetic pages every time, you'll burn out fast.

  • Messy pages = progress. Ugly sketches = improvement. Perfection = procrastination.

  • Chasing perfect sketchbooks is how people abandon art 😔🚪

1️⃣3️⃣ Act like you're making a YouTube tutorial 🎥✏️📢

  • Seriously. Pretend you're teaching someone how to draw as you go.

  • You’ll slow down, explain to yourself, and notice things you’d usually skip.

  • It helped my art ✨💡 and it might help yours… but no guarantees this time 😅

 🛑RESPECT OTHER ARTISTS. (Not a tip. A command.) 🫡🎨

If you make fun of beginners, mock digital artists, or drop “critiques” that sound more like insults…

You’re gonna get hate comments on your hate comments
and end up like Rachel Zegler on Twitter in 2023.
(This isn’t shade towards Rachel Zegler. I think that her hate was 90% undeserved and that's why I say to not make this mistake)

📌 If you liked this post...

You're going to LOVE the one I’ve linked below 🔗💖

It’s all about how to actually use colour pencil techniques correctly—from layering tricks to pressure control, it’s the follow-up your sketchbook deserves ✨🖍️🧠

👉 👉 (https://romantisinglife.blogspot.com/2025/05/golden-rules-of-colour-pencils.html)

📝 Final words:

You don’t need 200 pencils 🖍️, a ₹5000 sketchbook 📓, or a perfect Instagram feed 📷✨. You need heart and passion and just enough knowledge to not destroy your paper 🧠📄

And now you’ve got it. Happy drawing, fellow artist 💗

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