Want your drawings to look like they’re glowing from within? Try Using pastels on toned paper! ✨
Drawing with soft pastels or oil pastels on dark paper makes your colors stand out and your art feel full of light. Instead of shading darker, you add brightness — it’s like drawing with light!
Dark paper gives your pastels a strong contrast, so white, yellow, and light blue really shine. It also helps you create a mood — deep backgrounds can make your art look glowing, calm, or dramatic.
You don’t need to cover the whole page, either. Let the dark paper show through to add texture and depth.
Try it with glowing subjects like candles, stars, or sunsets. You’ll see how a few bright strokes can light up the whole drawing.
Using pastels on dark paper is an easy way to make your artwork bold, bright, and full of energy.
An 8 year-old student uses soft pastels to draw colorful bubbles on black paper. The dark paper allows the colors to really stand out, and some small details in white make the bubbles seem to glow.
This oil pastel candle really glows on the page because the white and yellow contrast so well with the black paper.
The colors in this ice cream drawing seem super bright and bold because they stand out against the dark paper.
By blending out the soft pastels into the background, these Northern Lights really glow!
