Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium is an enticing product for any artist who works with dry media, due to the unique effects it can produce in drawings. From coloured pencils to Conté and oil pastels, the medium allows you to blend, disperse, or paint with the material you’ve drawn with. In this article, I experiment with using the medium to create a variety of effects. It’s possible to completely transform a pencil drawing into the finish of a painting or to simply refine some tiny details – its uses are as broad as the practice of drawing itself.
Review of Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium
What is the Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium?
Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium is a solvent you can use to manipulate dry media. It leaves no residue on application and is completely clear. It comes with a safety top lid and has a chemical-citrus smell.
It is available in three sizes – 60 ml, 100 ml, and 250 ml. Despite only needing a very small amount of product to activate your drawing media, for the following tests I used up about a quarter of a 60 ml bottle working on a small scale. For any artist working with large-scale drawings, or a large body of work, the 250 ml size would be best. I would recommend the smallest size as a tester, or for ease of transport if you’re working outdoors.
This product is also appealing because of its very accessible price point. The 60 ml bottle is just £4.10, with the 250 ml being £10.60. For over four times as much product from 60 ml to 250 ml, the price doesn’t also quadruple.
It’s important to note that the Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium does contain solvent, so must be used in a ventilated space. It evaporates fairly rapidly, and I’d recommend placing a lid over the jar you’re using it from whilst working, so it doesn’t disappear during your working time. This product can be harmful to health and the environment if not treated as a solvent, like say an oil painting medium would be. It shouldn’t be treated as non-toxic just because it’s used with dry media.
How to Use and Clean up the Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium
You can use the Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium with a paintbrush, paper stump, or tortillon, and only need a small amount to activate your drawing media. For this review, I used a brush and also kept a jar of water and a rag to wipe off the pigment since I was moving between different colours. Simply dip your brush in the medium, and apply over the area you wish to blend. You don’t need to apply pressure at all, as the medium will almost instantly activate the drawing media pigment.
I would recommend not cleaning your brush off in the Pencil Blending Medium itself like you might when using watercolour pencils with a jar of water. This prevents muddying your medium and wasting product. Water was enough to clean my brush after using the medium with coloured pencils and Conté pastels. The exception was cleaning up after blending oil pastels, which I needed brush soap for since it had created a kind of weak oil paint.
Why Would You Use a Pencil Blending Medium?
Using a pencil blending medium is the perfect solution if you desire a shift in the texture, intensity of colour, or quality of colour mixing in a drawing. I tested the medium with three different dry media – coloured pencils, oil pastels, and Conté pastels.
In all of the following tests, you can see that the media alone picks up the tooth of the paper. Once the blending medium is applied, this texture is flattened, as the medium disperses the colour into the grooves of the surface. This could be useful for broadening a variety of textures in mark-marking on the surface of a work.
In terms of intensity of colour, the medium can be used to lighten any mark-making you have already made by dispersing it. When using an eraser isn’t an option, loosening up some pigment that may be too strong on a work is useful.
Of course, the quality of colour mixing is also an asset of Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium. Once you have layered up colours in dry media, the effect of the blend may not be as seamless as you’d like. By applying the medium, any unwanted marks can be smoothed over.
Testing the Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium
For my first swatches, I tested the Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium with Caran d’Ache Luminance pencils in Violet (120), Crimson Alizarine (589), Ultramarine (140), Ultramarine Pink (083), Moss Green (225), and Bismuth Yellow (810). I blended different colours from opposite sides of the page towards each other with the medium and loved that the finish of the effect was so similar to using watercolour pencils. This opens up a new versatility for coloured pencils, without having to simultaneously build a watercolour pencil collection.
I also tested layering the Caran d’Ache pencils and then blended the same layered colours with the medium. I think using a combination of blended and unblended areas in the same drawing would look really beautiful.
I then tested diffusing some strong pencil mark-making with the medium, to see if I could successfully knock them back. This worked better for the blue and pink than the purple and green which remained more strongly pigmented. Despite this I like the effect of the halo of dispersed colour around the mark-making too, appearing somewhat like soft pastel rather than coloured pencil.
Next, I tested three of the Holbein Artist’s Oil Pastels with Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium – Violet Grey (U611), Violet (U601), and Blue Green (U549). I arranged them in three circles of colour in a triangle and then blended the colours toward each other. The oil pastels blended with medium transformed them into paints. Again, I think the differing textures of blended and unblended areas together is visually enticing.
Next, I wanted to demonstrate the oil pastels arranged in a composition, alongside the same composition completely blended with the medium. They have such a different finish, from hazy and light to solid and heavy. Achieving this strong opacity of colour without the medium would require using so much oil pastel to lay down a thick layer. I think for pastel artists, this could allow them to prolong the longevity of their materials when trying to cover areas completely.
For the following swatches, I tested three Conté à Paris Colour Crayons – Marine Blue (71), Mineral Green (30), and Red Brown (07). I wanted to show how the Conté appeared mixed with the medium, alongside applied on its own. Next, I layered two colours together and blended the same combination with the medium below. I don’t think adding the medium increased the colour payoff with any of the other materials, but I think it has slightly strengthened the Conté. Perhaps because they are very dry and powdery, and having them more attached to the paper makes them appear stronger.
Finally, I swatched the Marine Blue Conté on its own, and then with detail painted on top with the Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium. Using the medium as a drawing tool, rather than just for blending creates an exciting opportunity for creating greater depth without switching colours.
Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium is a versatile product that opens up a wide variety of finishes for drawings that would be impossible to replicate with dry media alone. The freedom to transform drawings with areas of finish that resemble painting, or by just adding some subtle blending or detailing, provides a host of opportunities for artists to adapt this product as they please. For me, it is most appealing in straddling the gap between drawing and painting, in a very simple form.
Further Reading
Michael Harding Explains His New Miracle Medium
Peg and Awl Sendak Artist Roll Review
Frances Featherstone Experiments With Jackson’s Oil Painting Mediums
Shop Jackson’s Pencil Blending Medium on jacksonsart.com
Thanks for this review, it looks like a great
product! Being a solvent and possibly
rated as hazardous, are you allowed to ship
it outside the UK? I’m in Switzerland. Thank
you!
Hello Beth, yes this product can be shipped to Switzerland. Thanks!