What to use to color adult coloring books?

What should You use with adult coloring books that have fine detail?

If you are worried about having to spend a lot of money on art supplies for adult coloring books, you can stop worrying right now. You don’t need anything fancy or expensive to make beautiful works of art and enjoy this relaxing activity.

Best Art Supplies to use with adult coloring books

Adult coloring books often have very small details for you to color. Therefore the best products to use are tools that you can control easily so that you can color with a high degree of precision. We recommend the following media:

• Colored pencils
• Colored pens
• Gel pens
• Fine tip markers
• Watercolor pencils

Colored pencils are one of the most popular media to use for adult coloring books. The biggest benefit to colored pencils is the fact that you can shade with them. Within a single spot of color, you can make one side darker and the other side lighter or add fine details with the use of colored pencils. This is a huge advantage that colored pencils have in comparison to markers or pens, which do not allow shading.

However, colored pencils can be too light for some users. If you like bold colors, you might find yourself going over colored pencil markings many times to get the vibrant colors you are looking for. In this case, pens or fine tipped markers might be the best solution.

Watercolor pencils are very similar to colored pencils, except that they interact with water to allow the colors to blend. They act a bit more like watercolors when they are exposed to moisture. This means that watercolor pencils can achieve extremely vibrant colors that are impossible with regular colored pencils.

One thing to consider is protecting the rest of your coloring book. Pens, markers, and anything else that uses wet ink are likely to bleed through to the following pages. If you don’t want to see color spots on the next picture, it is a good idea to put a paper in between the pages when you color with one of these implements. Colored pencils do not make use of wet ink and therefore will not bleed through.

What you shouldn’t use with adult coloring books

When it comes to coloring adult coloring pages, there is really no wrong way to do it. You should do whatever makes you happy and helps you relax. That being said, the intricate artwork in adult coloring books lend themselves better to small and precise media rather than larger and more imprecise media.

Crayons, pastels, brush tip markers, thick pens, and paints are some examples of media which are likely to cause more frustration than relaxation when coloring. Large media can be used with success in the larger areas of the artwork, if you want to try them, but we do not recommend them for the small detail work.

Art Supplies that don’t work well on fine detail:

• Crayons
• Pastels
• Brush Tip Markers
• Thick Pens
• Paint

You should also keep in mind the texture of the paper when selecting media to work with. Markers and paints are wet and can cause the paper to disintegrate and break down. If you want to use watercolors for your adult coloring pages, even with very small brushes, you may want to photocopy your coloring page onto heavy watercolor paper before beginning.

The main point is to have fun and do what feels good to you. Different people have different preferences. Some people love markers, some prefer crayons, and some wouldn’t dream of using anything but pencils. Just make sure that your art media of choice allows you to get into the small spaces of your coloring pages, and don’t forget to have fun!