A Beginner's Guide to Avoiding Smudges While Coloring
Few things are more frustrating than finishing most of a coloring page only to smear it with a stray hand or sleeve. Smudges happen to everyone, but a few simple habits can prevent most of them.
Why Smudges Happen
Smudging usually comes down to fresh color meeting pressure before it's had a chance to set — a resting hand, a sleeve dragging across the page, or pages rubbing together in a bag or folder. Softer coloring tools like graphite pencils and pastel-style crayons smudge more easily than harder wax crayons or dried marker ink.
How to Avoid Smudges
Working from one side of the page to the other, rather than jumping around, means your hand rests less often on freshly colored areas. Placing a clean sheet of scrap paper under your coloring hand also creates a barrier between skin and fresh color. For particularly smudge-prone tools, letting each section dry or set for a few moments before resting a hand nearby makes a noticeable difference.
Simple Ways to Practice
- Try coloring a page from left to right if you're right-handed, or right to left if you're left-handed, so your hand trails behind fresh color rather than over it.
- Slide a spare sheet of paper under your hand as a simple, reusable barrier.
- Combine this habit with a light layering approach, since thinner layers, as discussed in our guide to layering colors, tend to smudge less than one heavy pass.
- Choose paper with a bit of texture, following our guide to choosing paper for coloring, since smoother paper can smudge more easily.
Tips for Parents and Teachers
- Keep a spare sheet of paper nearby specifically as a hand rest during coloring sessions.
- Store finished pages separately, or with a protective sheet on top, to avoid smudging in transit.
- Left-handed colorists may need extra encouragement to find a comfortable hand position, since many pages are drawn assuming a right-handed grip.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which coloring tools smudge the most?
Graphite pencils and soft pastel-style crayons tend to smudge the most, while wax crayons and fully dried marker ink smudge the least.
Can a smudge be fixed once it happens?
Sometimes a light smudge can be softened by carefully coloring back over it, but heavy smudges are usually easier to accept as part of the finished piece rather than fully removed.
Does spraying a page with fixative help?
For dedicated art pieces, a light fixative spray can help set graphite or pastel colors, though it's usually unnecessary for typical coloring book pages.
Conclusion
Most smudges come down to hand position and timing, both of which improve quickly with a little awareness. A spare sheet of paper under your hand is a small habit that prevents a lot of frustration.