Coloring with gel pens is awesome for many reasons, but one of our favorites is how easy they are to blend! Because the ink comes out wet, it’s easy to blend two or more colors into entrancing new combinations. Try these color combos with your GelWriters next time you find yourself in a coloring frenzy — they can add a surprising dash of depth and detail to your work!

Before we dive into the combos, a few blending tips are in order:

1. Gelwriter ink comes out wet and dries quickly. For best results, use blending techniques within 60 seconds of applying your base ink
2. Blending works best when there is more than enough ink on a surface. To get more ink flowing, press the tip of your GelWriters firmly into a piece of scratch paper several times. Once it’s flowing, use short, even strokes to dispense more ink onto the page.
3. Start with your dark colors and work gradually toward light. Light colors are great to put over the top of dark wet ink, because you can manipulate them with a pen tip and mix the two to various effects. Dark ink tends to overwhelm light ink when applied last.
4. Don’t forget hatching! Use close parallel lines to create different values of a color. A good technique for blending two colors is to create a solid block of each with a bit of white space in between. Fill the blank space with parallel lines of both colors to create a blended gradient.

Alright, are you ready? We named these color combos on the fly — feel free to use whatever name for them you’d like.

Enchanted Green

This color combo is great for intense eyes and verdant fire, as well as bright highlights in your leafy spring coloring books!

Ignition

The clashing warms and cools in this vivid combo are great for creating fiery gradients that suggest impressive power and movement. The band of silver in the middle is very thin and mostly blended in, and is used as a slight buffer between the contrasting colors.

Cosmic Cloud

This array of glittery gel pens creates a space-like effect with many applications! Can be used in a gradient or in patches/lines to create skies that really pop.

And there you have them, three vibrant combos to try on your next page or doodle! Colorists, do you have a few special combinations of your own? Share them with us in the comments below or on our Facebook page, or tag us at @gelwriter or #gelwriter on Instagram!