The Colored Pencil Exercise That Changed My Life 

Hope you guys find this coloring exercise as useful as I did. It really helps with getting those colors just right in your pencil drawings. Check out the free worksheet template here: www.kirstypartridge.com/colour-theory-worksheet

These are nice exercises. I would also recommend trying the same thing using yellow, cyan, and magenta as your primaries. I find that those three colors make more vibrant secondary colors, and makes for color wheels with more even increments.

in college, I got tired of hauling around a big bag of colored pencils. Even now, I just carry around a true blue (cyan), process red (magenta), and yellow prismacolor, and just blend them, like how an inkjet printer would.. I'll only bring in additional colors if I need special effects (deeper blacks, intense red, sodium vapor light, etc). Hugely improved the quality of my art.

This is one of the best and most informative video on color theory for colored pencils I've ever seen. Thank you Kirsty for sharing.

I have to admit, I have never understood why so many people keep banging on about the colour wheel/colour theory so much. It’s always seemed obvious to me what goes with what. But I also understood something significant has been missing from my drawing - the thing that elevates a drawing from flat to real. You have just completely blown my mind - I am so glad I stumbled across this video today! Thank you.

This is like my entire semester of Color Theory uni class in one video.

Being colour blind i struggle no end with colours nicely named pencils and pens are a big safety net for me.

Oh my goodness, I have painted with acrylic for years but still have problems with my color mixes and how to make my paintings improve. I do believe watching this video has helped me to understand color theory in a way I never could grasp before! Thank you so much, Kirsty! You are an amazing instructor!

I’m absolutely blown away! You’ve rejuvenated my colored pencil fascination. This is the easiest to understand color theory/colored pencil tutorial I’ve ever seen. (I’ve been around for a hot minute.) Thank you for this, I’m truly grateful!✨🙏✨

I am a complete beginner and I know you have saved me so much pain and suffering by just sharing these tips and the worksheet. I am thankful to you Kristy

This video is so timely for me. Thanks for posting on how to blend with a 12-color set. The last two days I've been hunting around for videos like that and they are few and far between! Most other channels will say they're using 12 pencils, but then they use 12 obscure pencils from their set of 150. See, I'm on a two-week small-set challenge. So yesterday I gave up on tutorials and just decided to DIY. I've got to say I'm really proud of myself! I coaxed all kinds of muted, realistic colors out of my $3 "kids" set of 12 from Walmart. Give small set art a try, folks! (If anyone is curious, the pencils I found are Staedtler Design Journey. They remind me of Goldfabers/Polychromos. They're fantastic for the price!)

The best tutorial on color creation for art in any video I have seen. These principles can be applied across the board for many medium! Great work!

Wow, I have been doing these exercises since I started color pencil 13 years ago! These are really helpful! The only suggestion I make is for the color wheel, try to use only five pencils: white, black, magenta, cyan, yellow. The primary colors on this color wheel weren't the best for mixing, especially that warm red. Anyway, thanks for sharing!

I did have trouble with colour mixing because every tutorial I saw would use many different colours so it was really confusing , but now I get it , playing with colours does give you knowledge and fun 😊 I really missed you Kirsty tbh

I am not an artist… well not a schooled or educated artist. I never went to school. I’ve never been to a class of any kind. But over the last couple years I started painting and drawing. I just felt the need to do so. I love it. I’m not bad but there are times I don’t know how to achieve on canvas or paper what I see in my minds eye. This has been so incredibly helpful. I’ve watched other videos but they were so confusing. This was simplistic and easy to understand. Thank you soooo much. Sincerely. Thank you. Stay well. Stay safe.

It's amazing how you can create so many different versions of the same colour!

I agree with the comments below: this has to be the best Practical colored pencil/color theory video I've watched. I feel smarter after watching it! Thanks for sharing.

Great exercise. I’ve been doing these type of exercises for years. I would recommend trying the same thing with a mid yellow, cyan and magenta, brighter mixes. Also, try doing a split primary colour wheel, that is a warm and cool version of each primary. So much fun learning how colours mix. I do heaps of different colour wheels with different sets of three starting colours..

These exercises should be done to hone whatever color medium you are working in: pencil, pastels, paint, even digital painting can benefit.

So clear and helpful. Thanks for a great tutorial once again, Kirsty, and the lovely worksheet...

Taking me back to my Color Theory and Design college courses on this one! Excellent work and a nice refresher for any artist that might be stuck in their colorwork!

As someone who uses watercolors, it’s always interesting to see what people have to do with other mediums. I also find that even with watercolors, people still struggle with mixing colors and understanding color theory because of having premade colors in their palette. I learned some basic theory on my own from just using the Daniel smith essentials set of colors! It was a palette of 6 colors, 2 kinds of primaries, cool and warm tone

Of the videos I have watched explaining this, yours is the best. You broke it down and explained every part in a way a person can understand. Thank you. I hope you have a video combining all those colors to create the picture.

Years ago I read a book called The Paradox of Choice. It’s about how having an abundance of options ironically limits us. They referenced a study where a vendor at a food market had 24 different types of gourmet jam for customers to sample, and they offered a coupon to everyone who tried the jam. The catch was, they could only choose one flavour to buy. On another day, they repeated the experiment with just 6 varieties of jam. They found that even though the larger display attracted more customers, those who tried samples on the second day were more likely to purchase a jar of jam. This was thought to be because on the first day, there were too many options and customers got overwhelmed. They found themselves deliberating over which flavour tasted the best, which one had the highest quality ingredients etc, then many gave up and walked away without purchasing anything. When the sample size was limited, customers were more certain about what they wanted as they had fewer options to choose from. I think the same theory applies to your coloured pencils. When we have too many choices, we can limit ourselves. It’s best to stick to the necessities when possible. Your artwork is beautiful by the way!

Thank you for a very nice discussion of color mixing. I'm familiar with color mixing in other mediums but haven't yet worked much with colored pencils. The idea of choosing which color to put in a sandwich layer (beyond just layering colors) was something I hadn't considered - it makes a lot of sense when considering how the color shows up through underlying layers and reflects off upper layers. 🙂

This has been the best color theory instruction I’ve ever seen or read. I have adhd. It’s hard for me to keep focused when people over explain things. You did perfect! Kept my attention entirely and I’ve retained the information. Thank you!

Brilliant and easy to understand. One of the best videos of any topic I've seen on RU-vid. Thank you

A couple of critiques that I hope you don't mind. The tertiary colors. You keep flip flopping them. Yellow Green then Green Yellow. Red Purple (Volet) the Purple Red. Secondly, you touched on it at least twice but you never clarified. The closer you hold a pencil to the tip (Front) the heavier the hand, thus the darker the value. The farther back you hold on the pencil the less pressure you apply (a lighter hand) and the lighter the value. There's also overhand grip vs underhand grip for value control. One last addition is the "Pinch" method for creating gradient values. Pinch (Apply pressure) and you will have a darker value and then as you shade (up/down/left/right....whatever direction you are shading) gradually ease up on pinching and your values will also get gradually lighter. This will help with the shading process and in creating gradients.

Thank you, this is exactly what I needed! I really appreciate all the time and effort you’ve put into creating this template. Than you so much.

I see you are using FC Polychromos. I just bought a dozen Polys of my favourite earthy colours to try out these "hard" pencils after seeing someone use them in layers. Coming from a Prismacolour background I favoured the "buttery" type but was intrigued at how well the Polys laid down pigment with the lightest touch. Once I got them, I was blown away by them and am a new convert. So I was contemplating what other colours to get and considered basic colours for mixing, and here you pop up with this great tutorial and template. Thanks! I will still get a few more "ready"colours for the ones I would use a lot, but it's good to have options for mixing the in-betweens without wasting money on sets with dozens of bright colours I would never use.

YES! i think as a beginner, i definitely underestimated the value of these exercises. i thought, i must be able to learn it WHILE making art, i don’t need to practice! but i did, we all do, i STILL need to do exercises to get myself out of narrow comfort zones that leave me struggling and making incomplete artwork. I’m primarily a digital artist, and one thing that beautifully helped me was that my art teacher in 9th grade gave us an assignment for digital art: use at LEAST 25 different brushes to make one artwork. I scoffed, thinking how would I make a piece with that much variety in texture and sizing, etc. but i did it and it was probably my best quality piece for the next YEAR. i had never tried half the brushes i used, and i started using half of them after that assignment. just, if there’s any advice i could give beginner artists, it’s to push yourself to do something that isn’t going to be grand. waste your own time. waste supplies, throw paint on the canvas for fun if it means you’ll learn what it would look like if you did it. you’re not going to make your best artwork right now. what you’re doing is setting yourself up for your best: and that comes from having more fun and doodles than you should have grand, 20+ hour artworks. seriously, no matter how stupid the exercise seems to you, as slow and maybe “robotic,” if you are ready to move on to more detailed techniques, definitely get started with the supposed “time wasters”. regardless, keep having fun!

I cut my Bristol smooth paper to 8.5 X 11" and fed it through the rear feeder on my Canon printer. Set the paper to Card Stock.

This tutorial was GREATLY HELPFUL!!!!! Thank you for taking this valuable time to show the importance of creating varied colors, shades, or shadows. I plan to print out the guide you put together. Once again, thank you💜

This is the most sensible explanation of color I have ever heard. Thank you!

You cropped up in my recommendations again after years, and I'm SO glad you did! I forgot how incredibly jaw-dropping your art is. It's better than anything I could have imagined. Also, you're the person who taught me to draw, and I've sold three pieces now. Thank you!

This is gorgeous and awesome! Color theory actually made sense to me 🤩 thank you

This is exactly what I have been looking for.

I recently started drawing using coloured pencils inspired by you... Beforethat I used to draw water colours... But after seeing some tutorial vedios my skills had improved a lot... Everybody appreciates my drawings now... Thanks a lot mam🙏🙏🙏

Thank you so much for this video and walkthrough. I am a self-taught hack and your video helped me out a lot with understanding color principles. I can’t wait to dive into the exercises! Thank you for your channel and your time!!

This video is crazy, it covers just A LOT of color theory applied to colored pencils… 🙀 Since you were using the amazing Polychromos here, one advanced technique that I enjoy using with them to lighten my color is applying my eraser to it! Depending on the paper etc this can lighten the color while still retaining the coverage obtained with lots of layers - super cool. I find it most useful for adding small highlights though, especially with a tiny Tombow Mono Zero eraser! 😺

Such an amazing lesson! Thank You SO much!! Really giving me skills to create, layer & blend!! YOU ROCK!! You are an extraordinary teacher! Your wonderful free gift is on it's way to help me grow in being a colorist!!

Thank you for this Kirsty. I've been learning to use coloured pencils for realistic colouring, and have just started posting a few videos of my efforts. It's an old adage that less is more, but I think you clearly show that in many cases, using less, but using them well gets results. I will be using your worksheet to help me on my next set of images.

Kirsty, Thank you for producing this tutorial! It is an excellent companion to the "Picking Perfect Colours" guide that I had previously downloaded from your website. That guide was informative for me last summer, when I was creating a personalized colored pencil drawing for my brother's graduation gift. 😊 But it is an even further blessing to have this video, in which you walk us through some of those same concepts in a thorough, conversational manner. I think these resources complement each other so nicely - since I love having things written down for reference (like the downloadable guide), yet I also benefit from having someone there to walk me through the process (like you do in this video). I appreciate that you have made both of these available! (Side note: When I clicked on this video, I wasn't expecting it to be such a thorough tutorial. To me, it seems like this video should be subtitled something like, "Color Theory Basics in Practice." 🤷🏼‍♀️) Thanks again! ~ Chelsea P.S. I hope this verse encourages you today: 😊 "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)

This is the best. I have struggled to understand colour theory until I watched this. I will print the worksheet and watxh again tomorrow. Thankyou so much ❤

Awesome video! This is useful not only for colored pencils, but also for color theory in general. You can really apply that theory to any medium, even digital. Thank you for sharing!!

This is one of the greatest tips you have given me. Thank you so much. Ive been out of drawing for three years due to illness ect but now im looking forward to starting up again using this tip. TY so much again

This info is VERY helpful. I will be coloring the worksheet you gave us ALOT. Thank you!

This is the best color theory video I’ve seen. It makes so much more sense to me now. Thank you so much!

This single video answers all the questions about colour I had and couldn't figure out for years. Thank you!

My mum is a wonderful artist and I remember her doing these types of exercises. Every time I asked her to show me, she would explain it in a way that confused me to no end. So, thank you! I get it now.

That was a very good exercise and thanks for the worksheet - big help!

Really enjoyed this tutorial. You make it very simple to understand. Loved the way you brought reality of colour and changing tones etc. thank you.

Brilliant , simple but so easy to follow. I will be applying it to my paints as well. Thanks for sharing this great technique.

Missed you kristy

Great tutorial as always Kristy! I love this type of exercises.

This is something we all do, that don't have money and draw and paint with less colours and therefor need to learn all about it to do it, in all techniques.

Thankyou, Kirsty. That was very helpful. I finally understand the colour wheel. I have downloaded the worksheet and will give this a go. Veronica 😊

Thank you Kirsty you made it very easy to understand I have struggled with color and certainly mixing. Light bulb went off with this lesson. THANK YOU

This was THE most helpful color wheel explaination I've ever seen. Thanks so much!

Thank you 🙏, this is exactly the information I have been looking for!! So super grateful 💕☺️

Amazing! Looking at the colorwheel this way, with the worksheet makes it clearer. I also appreciate the freebies. Going to subscribe to your channel

This is so wonderfully helpful. I can not thank you enough ❤

This is really helpful. Thank you!

This is may be the best explanation of the why and how of color theory I've seen on RU-vid. . . and I have been looking.

Color theory made easy. Thank you !

Wow. This is fantastic! Thank you for creating and sharing.

Best color, explanation, video, exercise I have ever seen. This is a life-changing video for me. Thank you so much.

Just downloaded your coloured pencil worksheet. It's a game changer! Really made me think how to use different combinations of colours to achieve the look I want. I've recently started a botanical drawing course and the ultimate goal of this course is to use watercolour. I've never mastered watercolour so, for the time being, I'm sticking to my pencils! Thanks again for all your advice - really appreciated. Ann Australia

Such a helpful and inspiring video lesson, packed with tips and ideas, thanks a lot, Kirsty!

The BEST color theory video 💯 it finally makes sense to me , thank u !!

Thanks Kirsty! looks like a fun, interesting exercise!

Thank you. I started 8 weeks ago with color pencils, and the drawing always looked different than I imagined and wanted, and also changed the look/color over time. After watching this video and understanding the color wheel, me next drawing came out exactly as I wanted / expected. All in all, this was full of great advice.

Wow - what a great presentation. So helpful. And your Worksheet is GREAT! Thank you!

Wow, simply wow! What an amazing tutorial. One needs to be a master in their subject to be able to teach so effortlessly.

I must say that your presentation brings even more clarity with color theory 4 me. Thank you ever so. It is your presentation. Very giving. Very gently. And a whole lot of patience. Best day now.

This has been the most beneficial and informative art skills video I’ve ever watched! Thank you!!❤

I can't believe I've been doing this since i was little, i cant really buy a new set of colors because my family already bought me some so im left with whatever i have. I improvise colors and mostly purple because i never got that color 😭 thank you for sharing i was unaware that i was doing this

I’m far from an artist but I love playing around with it, and this was soooo educational for me!! Thank you!

THIS. VIDEO. Oh my gosh!!!! I am so fortunate to find you!!! I have learned SO much. Not only about colors; the layering technique. Can’t wait to download the work sheet. Watching from the Great Northwest of the U.S.❤

Wow! I've seen a lot of these color things before, but seeing this all together just felt so revolutionary! Thank you! Going to try this tomorrow with my watercolors. This really works for any medium!

What a good teacher you are. This was great.

I am learning and have watched so many videos trying to learn color. This video finally made sense to me, I get it now!!!!! Thank you!!!!! This has helped soooooo much!

Thank you for such a great informative video. It really helped.

What a wonderful explainer. Thankyou

Very good video on color. Blending colored pencils is hard compared to mixing paint, but a rule of thumb in pencils is to sharpen pencil as fine as possible in first layers and put down lightest colors first

Wouah, thank you si much sharing us those techniques, it is very useful.😊🌹

This is wonderful and applies to most mediums! I'm definitely using this with all of my students, thank you so much!

This is awesome.. looking forward to doing the sheet, thank you!

Wow! You really did a great job teaching this! Thank you so much for sharing. 💖

How do you know whether you are starting with the TRUE primary colours. I could be wrong but my understanding was that primary colours are not necessarily what you are starting with if you’re using an inexpensive set of pencils, crayons or paints. I noticed that your pencils had colour names. The correct blue had a specific name as did the red and yellow you picked. The blue was labeled Ultramarine which I recall being the correct primary blue, I had to slow the video to 0.25 x normal speed in order to catch the frame where you showed the names on the pencils, which I also recognised from somewhere. Scarlet red and Cadmium yellow were the other two. I haven’t watched all your other videos so perhaps you have covered this elsewhere? If not, please could you clarify whether this is important when doing a colour wheel. The worksheet looks excellent and I look forward to practicing the exercises. Thank you.

Great video - good lesson in colors.

Wow. Just wow. I have always understood the color wheel (I thought) but the way you explained everything makes me realize I didn’t really get it. This is so incredibly helpful. Hopefully this will help me with picking colors which is my biggest struggle. Thank you!

WOW...that's pretty amazing! thank you for sharing.

Haha thank you! My oldest daughter is a wonderful artist and can actually see all the variations of the colors. I see 7 colors. Sometimes they’re lighter or darker but they’re always just those 7. Not including black and white obviously. 🤷 this video made me smile

Thank you for making this video!

Thank you so so much, i just today purchased I THINK all the sketching tools I need.. all but the wisdom and knowledge which often CANT be bought. I appreciate your free assistance, the color wheel sheet will truly start me out on a great creation

You are amazing. I hope I can get back to coloring again.

Great clear explanation, recommend to anyone with adhd. Thank you 🙏🏼

One of the best videos ever about colors

Brilliant.