Essential Resources for Adult Colorists

Ever wanted to add a soft background to one of your coloring pics? Don’t have any Chalk or Soft Pastels? Don’t worry – you can raid your makeup supplies! Did you know you can use eye shadow as an alternative to chalk pastels? If you’re anything like me you may have a bunch of old eyeshadow palettes that you no longer use. You know the ones, they often have really bright colors from the 80’s. Now you don’t need to throw them away instead you can add them to your coloring supplies. I find the palettes with a lot of bright pigments will work best as they often appear much softer once placed on paper. 

The Highly Pigmented Eye Makeup Palette in Colorful Palette by Prism Makeup is an affordable and colorful set that will have your backgrounds looking beautiful.

It's easy using a few simple tools that you likely also have at home such as cotton balls or cotton pads. Just rub a cotton ball or cotton pad against the eyeshadow color you want and then simply apply it to the paper in a rubbing or circular motion. You’ll be creating gorgeous soft backgrounds in no time. It’s easy to add an eyeshadow background, For more information on how check out my article on Background Techniques.

A good quality light source is a necessity for adult coloring, especially at night but even during the day if you want to prevent shadowing across your work. I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the more I find I need heaps of light to see the details in my coloring pics.

One of the best investments I made for my coloring desk was an inexpensive portable battery operated USB Charging LED desk lamp with a flexible stalk. The LED lamp has three light settings and the flexible stalk allows me to move it into many different positions. This ensures that I can clearly see the spot I am coloring.

Another option for improving your ability to clearly see very small details in your coloring pics is to use a flexible stalk magnifying glass with a built-in light. It can be used with or without the light but will greatly improve your ability to get into those tiny, detailed areas without coloring over the lines.

For those of you who just want that bit of extra clarity when you're coloring and may not need to use a specific lamp or magnifying glass, a pair of reading glasses might be your answer. Comfortable to wear and also fashionable, these may prove an easy and convenient tool to pop in your coloring supplies stash. They can be very handy especially if you color on the go eg in a doctor’s waiting room, in the car while waiting for the kids during pick-up time, etc. Kerecsen make some great pairs of reading glasses. They come in many fashionable frame colors and in a multitude of magnification strengths. You can get them in packs of 5 making them ultra convenient to have in numerous spots where you like to color.

If you love using color pencils then one of the critical resources you will need to keep your pencils sharp and always “on point” is a sharpener. A couple of my most favourite sharpeners are the T'GAAL Angle Adjustable Pencil Sharpener, and the AFMAT Electric Pencil Sharpener. I have tried these with all types and brands of colored pencils from high end professional grade pencils eg Faber Castell Polychromos and Prismacolor to more economically priced options eg Crayola and no name brands from the Dollar Stores. Both work well on all my colored pencils, and I have many sets! Benefits of both include:

Sometimes mistakes happen when you’re coloring. Maybe you accidently color outside a line or your four legged coloring buddy (ie your cat or dog) brushes past you and knocks a pencil onto your page and an unplanned marking occurs! When these things happen, an eraser can be a godsend.

However, don’t limit yourself to thinking that erasers are only useful for removing mistakes. An eraser can be a helpful tool when adding (or more accurately, removing) extra creative touches to your pictures. Say you want to create an interesting background. You can lay down a wash of color either with a color pencil or maybe some chalk pastel. You can use an eraser to create some interesting patters in your background…perhaps a broken effect or a self-stripe or dot pattern – the possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

I like to use a plastic eraser such as the Staedtler Plastic Vinyl Eraser. For more challenging pencil mistakes where I want a very clean and accurate removal of any unintended marks, I prefer a Kneaded Rubber eraser such as the one made by Prismacolor. The kneaded eraser can be easily shaped and moulded to cleanly remove color pencil, pastels, chalks and charcoal markings.

Gel Pens are one of my favorite coloring media to use. They glide smoothly and quickly over the paper and they have a beautiful rich, sparkly, metallic and bright array of colors. But they are a wet medium which means that your work can be prone to smearing until the gel ink dries.

If you’ve ever made that sickening mistake when you’ve almost finished your gel pen coloring but you’ve accidently rubbed your hand across an area of your pic that wasn’t quite dry, you’ll appreciate this next tip.

Again, this is a product you are most likely to already have at home but it can be so helpful in preventing those unintended smears when coloring with gel pens – the humble paper towel! By carefully placing a piece of paper towel over the parts of your gel pen coloring that you have already colored you can prevent your hand from smearing the still wet gel whilst you are coloring an adjacent part of the pic. This has been a lifesaving tip for me when using Gel Pens.

In addition to this, paper towels are great for cleaning up the tip of your gel pens when they get clogged with glitter or dry gel.

Anyone who is a frequent user of gel pens will be able to relate to the issue of their gel pens occasionally skipping or the ink clogging in the nib of the pen. There are a few ways I have found for dealing with this and getting the gel ink flowing again.

One is by vigorously shaking your pen up and down to help get rid of any air bubbles that may have formed within the gel ink. This often helps to get the ink flowing again.

Another method which I use frequently is to firmly tap the nib of my gel pens onto a thick block of sticky notes anywhere from quarter of an inch or more thick should do the trick. The tapping of the pen on the thickness of the block allows for any glitter or minute debris on the roller ball within the gel pen nib to come free and let the gel ink start smoothly flowing again. It may take a few taps before you see the ink start to flow but generally after a few taps your gel pen will be flowing smoothly again. The thickness of the sticky note pad seems to allow for enough cushioning whilst being stiff enough to not break the gel pen nib when it is tapped firmly.

If tapping your gel pens on a sticky note block doesn’t free them up, and they’re not empty of ink, then another trick I like to use involves rubbing alcohol. Simply dip the nib of your gel pen in rubbing alcohol for a few seconds then wipe off with a damp paper towel and start to scribble your pen on a spare piece of paper. Your gel ink pen should be flowing again.