When blending with the pen, It makes the colour much more vibrant which is wonderful but it means you will need to constantly clean the tip of the pen on a sheet of clean paper to avoid dirtying or mixing colours together. It does soften pencil lines a little, but you can see from the image above that it is not really notable, especially next to the blender. This soft colourless pencil blends colours on the page to create new hues, and can also be used to smoothen pencil strokes so individual lines and hard edges appear softer. Burnishers - Use over colour to create a burnish (or shine) without changing colour of your artwork.

This is where the white pencil can also come in useful as it allows you to create new colours by applying white over the top. The Lyra Rembrandt Splender is designed for use with their Polycolor pencils which are oil-based, so it comes as no surprise that it does not blend very well when used with wax-based pencils. It is a soft colourless pencil made from the binder used for making coloured pencils and allows you to blend two or more colours together to create a new colour.

Like the blender, it does not change your colours, but creates a sheen which can be seen at an angle or when a light source hits the burnished area. I tried it on three coloured pencil ranges and a graphite pencil range and found that the most effective results were with the wax based coloured pencils, especially the Prismacolor Premier range. I decided to involve myself in the SAA Paint A Poppy Challenge and trialled the blender pen on the petals of the poppy using the SAA's Trial Watercolour paper - the results were immediate and pretty impressive and I found it quite exciting to see how the colours blended so well together during application. Apply the pencil gently and use circular applications so the pigment covers as much of the paper as possible.

If you are working with coloured pencils and want to create a subtle blend of colours then the Derwent Blender Pencil is the ideal accessory. When working on a textured paper, there are peaks and dips that need to be filled with the pigment to create a smooth finish. The barrel is thinner than the other blenders (apart from the Lyra), but the core is still the same thickness. Applying all the dark tones before blending them together with a lighter coloured pencil such as the white option will create the very colour you were hoping to achieve. You may need to push the bristles into the craters of the irregular surface to achieve a more consistent blend of pigmentation.These pencils are colourless and made with the same binder used in coloured pencils which allows you to blend two or more colours together. This soft, colourless pencil is made from the binding material used to make the coloured pencil core.