Blending stumps!

Pages from Dagdrömmar and Color me Calm where I prepared the background using Polychromos and paper stumps.

I get a lot of requests to explain about the paper stumps I so frequently use in my colouring projects. So here is a long overdue summary about this great tool! I personally find myself going more and more away from the colourless blender pencil, which I feel gives a more streaky and uneven finish, and using the paper stump more and more as I like the smooth smoky surface it gives. I have used it mainly for backgrounds in the past but nowadays I blend everything but the finest details with the paper stumps.

First of all, this is what they look like - a roll of cardboard with two pointy ends. You can find them in any art supply store and they are very inexpensive. I learned that there is a similar tool called a tortillon, which is hollow. These stumps are solid all the way through. I have never come across hollow tortillons in Sweden but you might want to know the difference if they are a thing in your country.

Like I shortly mentioned in my previous video, paper stumps are ideal for larger surfaces. But as they come in a variety of sizes, you can use them in quite detailed areas as well. 

Depending on how much pigment you have laid down with your pencil, you can use a very light hand, barely grazing the paper, or a more heavy touch, when blening. If you have several layers of colour on the paper it's enough to just lightly go over the paper with the stump to get a nice smoky blend. The stumps will conceal some of the streakiness in your colouring, but the blending will be much nicer if you try to lay down the colour as evenly as possible. You can clearly see the difference in this closeup where the orange bits were quite haphazardly coloured whereas the surrounding blue parts were coloured much more carefully before blending.
You can also use your blending stumps together with blending agents such as Gamsol or vaseline. However I only use mine dry so I cannot say anything about those methods. If I ever get around to trying that I'll make an update post about it!

As you can see in the first photo I keep a stump roughly per colour family. However these guys require cleaning from time to time. This is done with a piece of fine-grained sandpaper which I picked up at a hardware store. I cut the sheet in smaller sized squares so they would fit into a drawer compartment in my desk. 

Cleaning them like this will ensure they don't mess up your colour scheme and keep their point. If the point becomes too used up and frayed I just use a pair of scissors to cut it off then sharpen it again on the sandpaper. As the stumps are made of solid cardboard they will last a very long time. However if you find yourself with a pencil cup full of "dirty" paper stumps, you can create a craft project of its own and not let that precious pigment go to waste. One evening when I had no colouring inspiration I started scribbling on a blank sheet of sketching paper with a dirty stump. And before I knew it I had created this pastelly background that I can later fill with a drawing of some kind.

Below you will find a comparison closeup of two similar fields, the top one with no blending, just the layering of 2 Polychromos pencils, and the bottom one blended with a paper stump. And finally I enclose a short video that shows the layering and blending process. I hope this was helpful - Happy colouring!