1. Buy a small hand-held pencil sharpener. It will be needed to sharpen the colored pencils to help refresh their color and smoothness of coloring. If the color starts to look dull sharpen the pencil as often as you like to refresh the color.
2. All those swirls and lines can be a challenge to fill in so it is good to start with coloring the small areas first. Then it feels freer to make the broad sweeping strokes needed to fill in the bigger areas.
3. Set a timer for the desired amount of time wanted to color to keep track of desired stopping and starting times. It may be easy to lose track of time.
4. Don't get discouraged. Keep trying. If you have ever colored at all previously in life it may take a little while for "it to come back to you." Also a picture that is being worked on may not look that great while it is being worked on, however wait for that moment it will start looking better and that it seems to come together.
5. Each colored pencil will actually color two to three variations and shades of the same color depending on how hard the pencil is pressed down on while in use or how broad or close the strokes with the pencil are made with. Have fun experimenting with this.
6. Buy small $1 packs of colored pencils at the Dollar Tree and other discount stores in order to obtain a slightly different shade of the colors you may already have. This cuts down on boredom as the more colors and shades of a color you have the better it is.
7. In my opinion, Crayola brand colored pencils color smoothest and blend colors together easily.
8. DO blend colors together with colored pencils to get different shades of colors in order to have a good variety. For example, use a lighter color such as yellow under a green color to get a shade of green you don't have available in a pencil.
9. The DollarTree stores do have coloring books in a box marked as relaxing coloring and the price is one dollar. They run out quick so keep checking back if they are not displayed the first time.
10. The more expensive coloring books that run from 10 to 18 dollars are worth the money as they have so many templates to color they will be in use for several months. They also are made of better quality paper then the cheaper 1 dollar coloring books.
11. Don't worry about conforming to certain styles, colors, or standards. Everyone is free to color and make their picture look however they want it themselves.
12. These rainbow pencils that change color are so much fun and will automatically do a lot of the shading for us without much effort.
13. The most important thing is to have fun and relax! No pressure.
Images Credit: Onward
Participation with Thursday Thirteen at newthursday thirteen@blogspot.com
