Why Your Colored Pencil Colors Look Muddy — And What's Actually Causing It

By Lisa Albinus | Colored Pencil Artist & Instructor

Muddy Colors - What to do????

You've been working on a piece for an hour, your reference photo is right there, your colored pencils are sharp — and somehow everything on that paper looks like a gray soup that nobody ordered. Oh no! You have fallen into the trap of muddy colors!!

Good news: it's not you! It's not your pencils. It's a knowledge gap — and those are totally fixable.

Every Colored Pencil Has a Temperature and It Is Not Keeping Quiet

Every pencil in your set is either warm or cool — there is no neutral hiding in that tin! That red leans orange or it leans violet, and that blue tips toward green or toward purple. When warm meets cool on your paper without a plan, they react in ways you never intended and mud is exactly what you get. This is not a reason to avoid mixing warm and cool hues together — intentional temperature relationships are actually how we build shadows that glow rather than die on the page. The magic word is intentional, and intentional means swatching before you commit to your final piece. (Hint: always swatch on the same paper you'll be using for your final project — more on that in a moment!)

Burnishing Early Is Like Setting Concrete in the Wrong Shape

Colored pencil is a layering medium that needs time and light pressure to build the luminosity that makes people lean in and ask how you did that. When you press too hard too soon, you compress the paper's tooth, lock in whatever is sitting there, and close the door on any further correction. Stay lighter longer than feels comfortable and trust the process — the depth you're looking for is coming, it just needs more layers to get there!

Vibrancy is possible in your work!

Your Paper Is In the Conversation Whether You Invited It or Not

A warm cream paper quietly warms up every cool color you place on top of it, a stark white paper makes your lights fight you, and a toned paper changes how your darks behave in ways that will surprise you until you understand the relationship. Paper is an active participant in every color decision you make, so swatch on the paper you're actually going to use — every single time! Those muddy colors will be gone forever!

Warm Light Makes Cool Shadows.

Once this clicks, you will never look at a reference photo the same way again. When your lights and shadows read at the same color temperature, your work goes flat no matter how carefully rendered it is — and no amount of extra detail will save it. Learning to see temperature in your reference before you pick up a single pencil is the shift that takes work from a careful copy to something that actually breathes.

Let's Do This Together This Fall: Colored Pencil Color Theory

All of this — temperature, swatching, layering, paper relationships, and warm and cool light and shadow — is exactly what we're diving into in my Color Theory class at the Cain Center for the Arts this fall. We will have pencils in hand, working through these concepts together in the room the way we always do, and I promise you will feel the difference in your work immediately. Registration opens soon and if you've studied with me before you already know these spots fill up quickly, so keep an eye right here for the link!

Lisa Albinus is a colored pencil artist, children's book illustrator, and botanical artist in training pursuing certification through the NC Botanical Garden and the Society of Botanical Artists in London. She teaches at the Cain Center for the Arts, CPCC, UNC Charlotte McMillan Greenhouse, and the Cabarrus Art Guild.

© Lisa Albinus. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.