Amy Shulke 3/15/25 Amy Shulke 3/15/25

Vanilla Beans: I Need to Laydown

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It’s livestream-a-palooza here this weekend.

Even though I’m a major introvert and I listen more than talk in my regular life, I genuinely look forward to speaking with members during the streams.

People ask such good questions!

I feel like I always learn something from the UP and Wonkstreams, even though I’m doing the teaching.

It’s a win-win for both of us!

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*Paragraph spacing issues? I solved one major issue this week but there’s still a secondary problem. Click here for a more readable option.

Last week, I started to talk about my Big List of Things to Look For in a quality colored pencil.

Then I got derailed a bit when the most important factor wasn’t even on my list.

If you missed it, read my last-minute, on the fly Point #1 here.

Now we’re on to the next characteristic— the one I demoted to #2 last week.

I NEED TO LAYDOWN

Spoiler alert: I’m about to eat a little crow at the end of this article.

So for those of you who have been extremely annoyed at me yammering on and on about terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, economy colored pencils…

Now’s your time to gloat.

That is, if you didn’t already unsubscribe, which a lot of you did.

Nothing clears a room faster than insulting colorists for stubbornly buying box after box of cheap Chinese pencils in the hopes that one of ‘em might suck a little less than all the others.

Oops, I just lost another reader, didn’t I?

Oh well. You know the definition of insanity, eh?

Darn it. I did it again.

Well, for the three or four of you still here:

When you’re judging the quality of a colored pencil, once you weed out the many brands which are not sold open stock…

The next most important thing to look at is laydown.

Huh?

You heard me. The laydown.

Not lay down but laydown.

Laydown is very important.

“Hey Amy, if ‘laydown’ is so important, why haven’t I heard of it before?”

Simple. You don’t hear much about laydown because you’ve been learning from colorists who learned from other colorists who learned from other colorists…

There’s a coloring bubble which quarantines you away from the larger art world.

Only the biggest and most talked about art concepts and terminology ever penetrate the coloring bubble and even then, the message gets garbled.

…which is why y’all are convinced that highlights add dimension.

On the one hand laydown is super-duper important to colored pencil artists.

On the other hand, laydown is like breathing. When was the last time you had a deep conversation about the molecular composition of the air particles you’re breathing right now?

There’s just not much for one artist to say to another artist about laydown.

You gotta have it. If a pencil doesn’t have it, we ain’t touchin’ it.

It’s that simple.

Have you ever tried to color with a pencil and it just wouldn’t stick?

Maybe you drew a line and the line looked really faint? Even worse, it carved an ugly trench in the paper?

Or perhaps you filled in an area and even though you applied a lot of pencil on the paper, the color was almost transparent?

Ever notice some pencils look like you’re seeing the color through a sheet of frosted glass? The color’s there but it’s blurred by a thick layer of… well… something weird?

Then there’s the pencils which leave little blobby clumps of color? You’ll be coloring along, easy breezy. Then you look back and there are hundreds of concentrated lumps of color in your wake?

And that, my friends, is just some of the fun you’ll have when a pencil has laydown issues.

Put simply,

And I really should have led with this…

Laydown is how colored pencil looks when applied to the paper.

Good laydown = thick, smooth, and generous color with every stroke

Bad laydown = maybe I should do it again?

To be clear, laydown isn’t a technique. We’re not talking about a method for applying colored pencil onto paper.

We’re talking about what the pencil itself does when you touch it to the paper.

It’s not what YOU’RE doing, it’s what THE PENCIL does.

And now some of you are having an “ohhhhhh” moment. The lightbulb just flicked on over your head, right?

If the pencil doesn’t work, you can’t work with it.

Now if I know you at all…

You coloring book people are suddenly perked up and on the edge of your seat.

Sounds a little familiar, eh?

I mean, half the reviews on Amazon coloring books are something along the lines of:

“Beautiful book, terrible paper. Had to pay Staples to print these images onto better paper!”

But what if you’re wrong?

What if it’s not the paper?

What if it’s not your blending technique?

What if it’s those cheap-azz pencils you’ve been buying?

And now my artistic coloring students are confused because maybe I just hinted that coloring book paper is hunkey dorey.

Nope. It’s bad paper. I do not recommend it.

But it’s also not the worst paper in the world.

Some of y’all blame the paper when it’s actually the pencil’s fault.

If you’re using a pencil with poor laydown, that baby’s not stickin’ to nothin’.

Colored pencils and colored pencil paper have a symbiotic relationship. They’re interconnected.

A lack of quality in one will drag down the performance of the other.

But people mistakenly think they can improve cheap pencils with better paper, which is why coloring bookers discuss paper ad infinitum.

And it’s kinda true, cheap pencils do look better on better paper but holy schmoley, that doesn’t mean they look great.

Because of the laydown problem.

If a pencil is all gunked up with fillers and extenders and hardeners and shelf stabilizers…

You can’t fix bad laydown.

Holbein Strawberry 051 on Strathmore Bristol 300 Smooth. Light pressure. For students of The Point, this was a level 3 pressure.

Pick up a pencil and hold it lightly in a loose pincer grip about 2-3 inches up the barrel.

Now without pressing the bajeebus out of it, give the paper a soft scribble.

You should get a nice colorful line.

Do you feel like you should’ve pressed harder?

THAT’S A PROBLEM!!!

Pencils with poor laydown encourage you to press harder than you ought to, mashing down the paper fibers and cooking up a bad case o’ carpal tunnel.

Pencils with good laydown work with almost no pressure.

And pencils with good laydown will stick to even the crappiest of papers.

Now for that crow…

Excellent laydown isn’t an automatic benefit of artist grade pencils.

I happen to hate the laydown of a very popular pencil which starts with P and ends with olychromos.

But that’s a me thing.

And on the opposite side of the coin:

Cheap Chinese pencils are getting better.

Some of them have pretty good laydown. I’ve got a tube of Arteza sitting here and believe it or not, several colors very easily passed the laydown test.

I know! I was shocked too! Something freaky is going on with me today— defending coloring book paper and not talkin’ smack about pencils with the word “art” in the name.

(By the way, I still think my theory holds true. If the brand has cleverly hidden “art” in the name, run away.)

Anyway, it’s not automatic that cheap pencils = poor laydown, which is why I told you how to test and the signs to watch for.

Bad laydown is an automatic nopey-nope.

But there are other things to consider.