Mixing Colors With Crayons, Colored Pencils, or Watercolors: The Real-World Guide to Bold Color, Bad Habits, and Beautiful Accidents
Let’s drop the lie right here: Color theory is not just for digital slicksters or highfalutin oil painters in their Parisian lofts. If you’re broke, weird, or a little desperate, you’re mixing colors with whatever you’ve got—crayons scavenged from the bottom of a restaurant bin, the 12-pack of colored pencils you found under your car seat, or a Walmart watercolor set that cost less than your coffee. And guess what? You can make wild, jaw-dropping color with all of it—if you know how to push, hack, and brutalize the limits.
This is about survival, not snobbery. So forget about “proper materials” and let’s learn to paint the world, one cheap tool at a time.
Confession: My Boldest Colors Came From Crayola and a Dixie Cup of Spit
I used to envy kids with 120 shades and parents who bought Prismacolors. I had the ten-cent grocery store pack and a taste for chaos. But that’s how I learned the truth: it’s not about the box, it’s what you do with it. I’ve layered crayon until the paper warped, burned through three colored pencils to get a purple, and once made a full painting using only three watercolors and some borrowed coffee for shadow. Most of what I learned, I learned the hard, sticky, relentless way.
The Dirty Truth: Mixing Colors Is About Layering, Pressure, and Cheating Like Hell
With “real” paint, you slap one color into another and swirl. With pencils, crayons, or cheap watercolors, it’s a battle—one pigment beating the other into submission, a dance between transparency and brute force. You’re not just blending—you’re negotiating a truce.
Step-By-Step: Rust Dawg’s Streetwise Color Mixing Ritual
Step 1: The Primary Power Play—Red, Yellow, Blue
Don’t have a rainbow? Good. Start with the basics.
Red, yellow, blue—the only three you need to make every other color (almost).
If your red is more magenta or your blue is more teal, that’s fine. Lean into it. The “wrong” colors make for the best surprises.
Step 2: Layer Like You Mean It
Crayons and Colored Pencils:
Start light. Lay down one color in soft, circular strokes.
Layer a second color directly on top. Blue over yellow = green. Red over blue = purple.
Use more pressure for depth. Lighter for subtle blends.
For richer color, layer a third or even a fourth—yellow, then blue, then red. The pigment builds and mutates.
Experiment with order. Blue on yellow is not the same as yellow on blue.
Ingredient Hack:
Sharpen your pencils often. Fine tips blend smoother and let you build up layers without mud.
Step 3: The White Blender—Or How to Cheat the Rules
Use a white pencil or crayon to blend and soften your colors.
It’s not just for highlights—it melts two colors together and fills in the gaps, especially with cheap sets.
For waxy crayons, use a tiny scrap of tissue or your fingertip to “burnish” the colors together, smoothing the wax into a thick, painterly glaze.
Step 4: Watercolors—Go From Puddle to Magic
Start with a wet brush and a weak wash of your first color. While it’s still wet, drop in a second color and let them bleed together.
Want a smoother transition? Tilt the page, blow on the puddle, or dab with a dry brush.
Want control? Let the first layer dry, then glaze over with your second color—repeat until you get the punch or subtlety you want.
Ingredient Hack:
Don’t be afraid of “dirty” water. Sometimes a slightly muddy brush adds character. And yes, coffee, tea, or even watered-down ink work as makeshift “colors” in a pinch.
The Survivalist’s Guide to Mixing New Colors With a Pathetic Palette
Orange is just red + yellow. Start yellow, build red, blend with white.
Green is blue + yellow. Layer yellow first, blue next, blend hard.
Purple is red + blue. Try more red for a magenta-violet, more blue for indigo.
Dirty Reality:
Most cheap pencils and crayons aren’t truly transparent, so blending can be patchy and rough. That’s not a bug—it’s a feature. Texture is your friend. Let those strokes show, let the grit bleed through. It’s more honest, more wild, more alive.
Hacking the Color Wheel: How to Get Vibrant, Raw, and Real With What You’ve Got
Here’s where the fun starts—breaking the “rules” because you actually understand how color works on trash-tier materials.
Rust Dawg’s Real-World Color Hacks
1. Build Shadows With Complementary Colors
Forget black. Want a rich shadow? Add the opposite color. Green shadow on a red apple. Purple shadow under a yellow lemon. Blue under orange skin.
Crayon/pencil: Layer the complement gently over your base. It deepens the shadow without killing the life.
Watercolor: Glaze a thin layer of the complement over the dry area—watch it sink, merge, and shift.
2. Blend With the Paper
Let the tooth of cheap paper show through. It breaks up the color, makes everything look raw and interesting.
Press hard in the highlight, ease off in the shadow.
Change direction—one layer horizontal, one vertical, one diagonal. The more you mix up your marks, the more vibrant your color gets.
3. Accidental Color Mixing
Don’t clean your brush or pencil every time. Let a bit of green bleed into the blue, or brown sneak into the orange. This is how nature does it—messy, unpredictable, never clinical.
Step-By-Step: Blending for Depth, Not Just Color
Crayons and Colored Pencils:
Start with your lightest color. Lay it down loose and wide.
Add your mid-tone (the “in-between” color) right on top, still light pressure.
Press hard with the darkest color only where you need shadows or punch.
Use white, a colorless blender pencil, or even a scrap of tissue to smooth everything together.
Watercolors:
Paint one color, let it dry.
Paint the second color over the top for “glazing.” The two colors merge where they overlap, but stay clean elsewhere.
Try “wet-on-wet” for wild, uncontrolled blends—just keep a paper towel handy for disasters.
Ingredient Hack: Make Your Own Color Blender
For pencils, try a colorless blender (if you can afford one), or use a white pencil, or even a light gray.
For crayons, a drop of baby oil on a cotton swab can turn wax into soft paint—just don’t drench the page or you’ll end up with mush.
For watercolors, add a drop of dish soap to your rinse water—helps pigments spread and blend on cheap paper.
Personal Confession: My Most Vivid Colors Came From Being Too Cheap to Quit
I layered blue over red over yellow, back and forth, until the wax was thick and the paper could barely take it. Sometimes I ruined the drawing. Sometimes, though, the color glowed—like stained glass or a bruise. Those “mistake” colors taught me more than any art class.
Dirty Reality: The “Limit” of Cheap Sets Is the Start of Your Style
Embrace what your box can’t do. Got no turquoise? Mix blue and green and a little white—let the texture be part of the look. No skin tones? Layer orange, pink, brown, and white. Wild, raw, imperfect color is better than the fake “realism” of a $100 set.
Survival Strategies: Fill Pages, Not Palettes
Do a daily color mix chart with your tools—discover new combos, weird blends, and happy accidents.
Copy a favorite painting or photo using only your six ugliest colors. See what comes out.
Layer until you can’t. If the page gets rough, that’s when the magic happens.
From Chaos to Control: Building a System Out of the Madness
Now let’s get sneaky—turn those wild, accidental mixes into intentional, signature moves. If you want to actually use color to shape your art (not just fill it in), you need to understand a few more tricks, and you need to get your hands dirty, again and again, until your color choices are pure reflex.
Rust Dawg’s Rituals for Leveling Up With Cheap Color
1. Swatch Everything Like a Maniac
Before you attack your “real” drawing, make swatches.
Layer two, three, four colors in squares or circles—label them if you have to.
Discover which combos pop, which turn to mud, which look like bruises or sunsets.
If a combo sucks, good. Now you know—move on.
2. Use “Negative Color” for Contrast and Energy
Don’t just color inside the lines. Use a wild, contrasting hue to border or outline a shape—blue next to orange, purple on the shadow side of a yellow highlight. It’ll make your cheap tools look expensive.
3. Fill the White—But Leave Breathing Room
White paper is not your enemy, but cheap supplies often need a base coat to really glow.
Lay down a soft layer of yellow or pale blue before adding your main color. The underpainting warms or cools the whole area.
Don’t be afraid to leave highlights pure paper—let the light pop.
4. Layer With Intention, Not Panic
You don’t need to press until you break the pencil. Sometimes just two light layers, crossed and smudged, beat ten heavy ones.
For watercolors, let each layer dry before adding another. Patience brings depth.
Ingredient Hack: Salvage Old, Broken Crayons and Pencils
Peel wrappers, break crayons in half, and use the side for bold swaths.
Sharpen colored pencils with a craft knife for weird, chisel-like tips. Great for filling and fine details.
Water-soluble colored pencils? Go over your pencil marks with a wet brush and watch your color bloom—just don’t overdo it or you’ll warp the page.
Dirty Reality: Your Colors Will Never Look Like the Photo—And That’s the Point
If you’re copying a photo and it turns out different, GOOD. The magic of color is in interpretation, not imitation. Own the weirdness. Exaggerate the vibrancy. Nobody’s favorite painting was “perfect”—it was unforgettable.
Personal Confession:
The best compliments I ever got on color were for pieces where I used two or three colors in ways that would horrify a “realist.” The work felt alive because the choices were bold, strange, and just a little bit wrong.
Survival Wisdom: Use What You Have—Hoard, Scavenge, and Hack
Steal crayons from a diner, trade colored pencils with friends, blend watercolors from the school supply aisle with a kitchen brush.
If you run out, use pen for shadow, marker for highlights, coffee or tea for stains.
The more limitations you embrace, the wilder your palette—and your style—becomes.
Ritual for Relentless Progress: One Crazy Mix a Day
Every day, try a new combo—blue and orange, red and green, three muddy browns, whatever.
Don’t erase. Don’t panic. Fill a page, learn, move on.
Hang your best “accidents” on the wall. They’ll teach you more than any safe, careful drawing ever will.
Final Word: Mixing Colors Is About Courage, Curiosity, and Embracing the Mess
Forget the perfectionist’s curse. Color is about risk—and cheap materials are the ultimate training ground. Every clashing stroke, every too-bright blend, every rough edge is you learning, leveling up, and discovering your voice.
Confession: My Most Memorable Pieces Are a Riot of Accidents and Hacks
The stuff people love in my work—the unexpected greens in a shadow, the screaming reds on a face, the weird, oily blend from a half-melted crayon—came from giving up on “getting it right” and pushing for “making it loud.” You want art that jumps off the wall? Stop playing it safe. Stack your colors. Go too far. Make something ugly, then bring it back.
Ultimate Survival Wisdom: Your Palette Is What You Make It
Test every combo.
Use every tool, no matter how cheap or weird.
Build color in layers, not just one pass.
Steal light from the white of the paper, and use shadow to punch your colors forward.
If you’re broke, busy, or bored, remember: the best color you’ll ever mix is the one you didn’t see coming. That’s the gift of crayons, colored pencils, and dollar-store watercolors. Don’t waste a second wishing for more—make more out of less.
So dump out that junk drawer, raid the lost-and-found, sharpen what’s left, and make the ugliest, wildest, brightest art you can. Color is chaos, and chaos is king.
See Also:
“Colored Pencil Painting Bible” by Alyona Nickelsen (layering and blending mastery)
“Crayons to Canvas” by Cathy Johnson (serious art with the world’s cheapest tools)
Teoh Yi Chie’s “Color Mixing Tutorials” (YouTube—every cheap hack under the sun)
Cheap Joe’s Watercolor Tutorials (making magic with low-budget supplies)
The Sketchbook Skool “Color Bootcamp” (community, challenge, no snobbery)