Coloured pencil art has gained recognition as a fine art medium, thanks to talented artists who push its boundaries. Pioneers like Alyona Nickelsen and Ann Kullberg are celebrated for their lifelike portraits and mastery of layering techniques. Vera Curnow, founder of the Colored Pencil Society of America, has helped elevate the medium’s status worldwide. Other notable artists like CJ Hendry blend hyperrealism with bold creativity, proving that coloured pencils are not just a tool for beginners but a versatile medium capable of producing breathtaking, professional-grade artwork.

Marco mazzoni

Marco Mazzoni is an Italian artist renowned for his surreal coloured pencil portraits of women, intertwined with nature. Inspired by Italian folklore, his detailed works explore femininity and mysticism with striking, luminous compositions. One of my all time favourite colour pencil artists, his works are outstanding.

Alyona nickelsen

Alyona Nickelsen is a renowned colored pencil artist and author, celebrated for her hyperrealistic works. She is known for pushing the medium’s limits with innovative techniques with her creative composition and layering - as detailed in her book Colored Pencil Painting Bible.

Her art showcases incredible depth, texture, and realism.

CJ Hendry

CJ Hendry is known for her hyper-realistic coloured pencil drawings, applying colour in thin layers in the same direction, building up rich colours and achieving smooth gradients, often focusing on simple, very large objects. Her work emphasizes fine details, sharp contrasts, and realistic textures, with controlled pencil strokes creating depth and a photorealistic effect.

Paul Cadden

Paul Cadden is a Scottish artist renowned for his hyper-realistic pencil drawings. He employs techniques such as layering to gradually build depth and richness, cross-hatching and stippling for detailed shading, and blending to create smooth transitions and soft textures. His precise attention to detail and use of high contrast make his drawings appear almost photographic, capturing fine textures like skin, hair, and reflective surfaces with exceptional realism. He incorporates other mediums such as watercolour in the image below, using the same fine detail as he does with colour pencils.

Janet Mathews

Janet Mathews is an Australian colored pencil artist known for her vibrant and detailed botanical and natural subjects. She achieves depth and rich colour through careful layering, building up multiple layers of pencil to create subtle color transitions and texture. Her precise, controlled strokes capture intricate details in nature, such as the veins of leaves or the texture of petals. Mathews also blends with tools like blending stumps or solvents to smooth transitions, giving her work a polished, realistic finish. Through these techniques, she brings the beauty of the Australian landscape to life with incredible accuracy.

As I list these artists, I notice one common theme - which is something I want you to take away from this. Great colour pencil artists use lots and lots of thin layers of pencil - this is how you achieve depth and realism in your pictures, this also takes a great deal of time. Colour pencil certainly takes patience, in my opinion it is on of the most time consuming mediums out there. . . But. . . Boy, it’s worth it!

Would you have the patience to create a large colour pencil masterpiece?