In my art life I've worked with various media: oils, acrylics, watercolors, colored pencil, pen and ink, mosaic tiles...even crayons. Sometimes you're presented with a subject that just demands a particular medium. One of the art mediums I love is colored pencils - for their versatility and the softness they give that, to me, no other medium can do.
One particular technique I use a lot in colored pencil is that of burnishing. It often gets confused
with blending. Blending is a technique where you have two colors coming together and you use something - could be a tortillion, stump or even your finger, to bring the pigments together. You can use blending to soften the division between colors. One way I use blending is in sky and clouds. One way to highlight the white of clouds in a blue sky, is to blend in a bit of pale yellow on the underside of the cloud just where the blue color meets the white. It will actually cause the area to go a bit green...by pulling the blue pigment into the yellow you "make" green [blue plus yellow makes green]. You'll get a gradual blue-to-green-to-yellow-to-white.
Burnishing is totally different. This is a technique used when the piece or a particular area of a work has been completed. Then you take a lighter color pencil such as white, cream, pale yellow, cloud blue or even pale sage and burnish over top all the other colors. This will give the surface a polished, satiny finish and glow. It softens the colors without dulling them. In the two examples I have here, the lily and the Lionfish, I've used burnishing. *I use Prismacolor brand pencils - I like the intensity of the colors. I tend to saturate my colors and Prismacolor pencils give me the versatility I need.
In the Lionfish work I used cloud blue to burnish the background and cream to burnish the fish. Burnishing doesn't smear the pigments underneath, rather it "polishes" them.
The best way to burnish is to saturate the color, not just apply it lightly. The colors underneath still look bright and bold. In my personal estimation, burnishing seems to bond all the pigments and makes the object come alive.
This is a technique that is easy to test for yourself to see if it is something you want to add to your colored pencil "toolbox." On a scrap of bristol board or illustration board draw a 2-inch square and color it in with a red blue or green; saturate the color. Then draw a line to divide the box into two. On one side burnish with white or cream. This way you'll be able see the effect as compared to not burnishing.
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