The problem with traditional Copic blending technique and a lot of craft based colored pencil instruction is that they teach students to shade with a more saturated version of the same color
Shade pink with light red, shade yellow with orange, shade sky blue with royal blue, etc.
Which is why your coloring looks childish and fake.
This crafty rule is the exact opposite of what happens in real life.
A pencil sharpener is a pencil sharpener, right?
Oh no, grasshopper.
Colored pencil artists are pretty darned emphatic about the kind of pencil sharpeners they’ll use. Pencils are a tool and tools need to function properly. Your pencil sharpener can make life heaven or hell. A badly sharpened pencil is complete torture. A great pencil sharpener makes drawing or coloring a breeze. Which is why artists and artistic colorers are sticklers about what we’ll use and which sharpeners we treat like glowing toxic ooze.
