Since David Hockney set a precedent in the 1960s with his series of coloredpencil drawings, this medium has become increasingly popular with fine artists. Of late, there has been an enormous increase in the variety of colored pencils available on the market. Not only has the range of colors been vastly expanded, but the colors themselves are now much more consistently lightfast than before. You can also obtain watercolor pencils which allow you to dissolve or partially dissolve the colors on the paper with water. Clean, quick and portable, colored pencils are very useful sketching and drawing tools.
Colored pencils are available individually or in sumptuous-looking sets with dozens of colors.
Brands vary considerably in the range of available tones and in the quality and proportion of pigments, binders, clays and waxes they contain. In many ways, colored pencils work like watercolors. When they are used on white paper, the marks they make are transparent or semitransparent, which means you can put down one color on top of another, building up hues, tones and intensities until you achieve the result you want. As with watercolors, the secret is to make the white of the paper work for you. Optical color mixing You can use hatching and crosshatching techniques to create colors and tones.