This applies to both coloured pencils and standard grey lead pencils.

Generally, when student’s use pencils they are trying to a get a more subtle and detailed outcome.  If they press down firmly, it will be OK, but often pencils are used while pressing lightly.

Unfortunately, scanning does not pick up this detail well.  We have had great looking art where after scanning, there is only about 25% of the actual picture visible 🙁

If we try and increase the contrast, the rest of the colours change too much.  If we had 15 minutes for each picture to try and manually improve it, it’s still only a 50/50 as to whether or not we can.  Unfortunately, we just do not have the time to spend 15 minutes on an individual picture.  We have two recommendations:

1. Please avoid using pencils for any significant part of the art.

2. If someone does use pencils and the art is really great, it might be worth scanning it at your end (or pinning it to a wall and photographing it), spending time with the colour control tools in a picture editing program and then uploading the art to our website as a photo – or emailing it through to us.