Wax Wars
Fighting Colored Pencil Wax Bloom

by
Jeff Colburn

Have you ever noticed a milky-white film on your colored pencil artwork? This is called wax bloom. It once turned a beautiful black sky I had drawn into a milky grey sky that looked like a San Francisco fog had rolled onto my work. If this has happen to you, then I have a few solutions.

Pigments in most colored pencils are carried in a wax medium. After a short time, anywhere from a day to a few months, the wax may come to the surface of the artwork and make it look hazy. Following are several things you can do to prevent this from occurring to your artwork.

Probably the simplest solution is to use watercolor pencils. A friend of mine, who is a professional book illustrator, told me about this little trick. Since watercolor pencils are designed to dissolve when water is put on the paper, giving a watercolor effect, they contain no wax at all. Wax would prevent the pigment from mixing with water. So, if you have no wax, then you have no wax bloom.

Another characteristic of watercolor pencils is that their lead is harder. This allows you to do fine details and to press harder on your paper. However, if you're using a combination of wax based color pencils and watercolor pencils remember that the harder watercolor pencils may move around some of the wax based pigments when layering. You can compensate in several ways, including using the watercolor pencils under the wax based ones.

If wax bloom does occur, it can be removed by carefully wiping the artwork with a tissue. This can be done as often as needed, just be careful not to smudge your work and rub from the light areas into the dark areas. However, removing the wax bloom will not stop it from coming back, even if you do it several times. It can take six months, or even a year, before wax bloom stops. Some artists simply keep their artwork until the wax bloom stops before they show it or send it off to whoever commissioned it.

Other artists like to use fixative. You must apply two to six layers of fixative to keep it from returning, or to prevent it from occurring at all. If you finish a piece quickly, you can probably wait until you're done to apply the fix. Works that will take longer, or if you're putting on a heavy coating of pigment, may require you to apply the fixative as you finish different parts of the piece. Be sure to do some tests with your pencils before using fix. Sometimes fix will darken the pigments of your artwork. With enough experimentation you can make your art light enough so that the fixative will darken it to the shade you want in the finished piece. One bit of warning, some artists have found that wax bloom will still occur after the fix is applied. If this happens there is no way to remove the wax bloom.

I have found that wax bloom occurs at different rates, depending on temperature, humidity and the type of pencils used. Experiment and see what works for you.

If wax bloom is a problem for you, try the above solutions. It will prevent you from throwing away a good piece of artwork, as I did when the "fog" rolled in.