- Rubber shelf liners are perfect to lay under your work area. The rubber like quality will keep your pencils from rolling in the floor and breaking.
- When your lead is broken in the shaft. you can wrap the pencil in a paper towel and microwave for a few seconds at a time. When your pencil is very warm to the touch, lay the pencil to the side until the wax/oil hardens. (the broken pieces will melt and harden back in to one piece)
- Can’t find that perfect colored paper? Simply paint your white paper with a watercolor wash for custom colors. You may need to do a test on scrap to make sure your paper doesn’t buckle.
- Always wear a max when working with solvents and in a well ventilated area. Even if the solvent is odorless the chemicals are still in the air.
- Dust off your pencil after every sharpening to avoid smearing the color dust on your work.
- Workable fixative will add more tooth to your paper.
- Unless the drawing aspect of your painting is off, keep going no matter how bad you think it looks. The painting will have ugly stages. It is during the ugly stages when most gives up. DON’T ! Keep going until you are either satisfied or have no more tooth left to work with. I have to remind myself of this constantly, with any medium.
- If you lose you whites, you can go over that area with a little gouache or a white Stabilo pencil. Be aware! If you use these methods, your piece becomes a mixed media for contests in most cases.
- If your pencil is too short, super glue your pencil stump to a longer colored pencil of the same color.
- I learned this lesson the hard way! If have to trim a brand new pencil, make sure the color the number and color is on the opposite end of where you are sharpening.
I hope you have enjoyed this little mini series. I certainly enjoyed sharing. If you want to learn anything that I glazed over, it can be found easily on the internet. Best of Luck in Colored Pencil endeavors!
Other Lessons:
Be Well and Happy!
Carol Ottaway 
There is some fantastic stuff in here…some of it I could have used way back!! I love your list of things to have a go at in a previous post too. I spent hours doing fruits. They really helped me layer colours down and weren’t so time consuming that it drove me crazy!