If you want to make a transition from drawing realistically with graphite pencils to drawing realistically with colored pencils, then it is natural to want to maintain the "realistic" aspect of your work.

That said, it can be a challenge to make drawings look real with colored pencils.

Yes, it is true that they add color to your work. However, colored pencils, as versatile as they can be, are still a far cry from being able to mimic an exact representation of the vast array of colors portrayed in real life or in a photograph.

Even so, there is a lot you can do with colored pencils to get a look that is at least closer to a "realistic" look. For example, have you ever thought about painting with colored pencils?
<h2>Burnishing...the Art of Painting with Pencils</h2>
You may be thinking, "It's impossible to paint using colored pencils!"

The reason I bring up painting is because out of all the art mediums, paint is the one most closely associated with the most realistic works of art.

Now since the focus of this lesson is on the medium of colored pencils, wouldn't it be cool if we could achieve an effect similar to painting with our colored pencils?

It is quite possible to achieve such an effect using the technique of burnishing.

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