Can colored pencils work with graphite?

[oOXGraceXOo]

Wow, I haven't been here in awhile. Anyways, I have just "discovered" colored pencils, I recently did a quick drawing of a friend and I remembered that I had some crappy colored pencils, (and I do mean crappy, everything is about 10 shades lighter than it's supposed to be, =P) from an art kit that I had never used and I'm trying to be more spontaneous and actually enjoy drawing so I tried them out. Turns out, I freaking love colored pencils. So I bought myself a 24 count box of Crayolas so I could have some darker colors and right now I'm working on my first real attempt at colored pencils.




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(It's probably not recognizable yet, but it's going to be Katy Perry.)
So my question is, can you mix colored pencils with graphite? I just want to use it on her hair, (maybe eyelashes,) everything else will be colored. Should I use the graphite or black colored pencil? I would use colored pencil but the Crayolas, (they were 3 bucks, whaddya want? ) don't blend at ALL and how I usually do hair is get the basic shapes down, blend, pull out the highlights, sharpen what needs sharpened, and repeat. I was hoping to do what I normally do and just add little touches of blue, purple and brown for depth. What do you guys think I should do? Thanks!

P.S, I plan on doing the hair last and I do have workable spray fixative that I plan on using once the main colors are done to protect them.

[mlegs]

i see nothing wrong in mixing graphite with colored pencils. In fact, I find graphite the only salvation when we want to darken the color more than the colored pencil allow us. (ex: shading ) i do not recommend u using the black colored pencil because it has some disadvantages: as you said, you cannot blend to easy a color pencil drawing (which you might need in a portrait), and another disadvantage is that the eye lashes will be difficult to make with a black colored pencil's line might become thicker as you draw with it.... good luck

[jeanine]

Graphite and coloured pencil are technically well mixable because they have the same consistence. However I imagine that the graphite-hair will look a bit greyish next to the dark areas in the background. Also it's more shiny. To avoid this you could do the areas in the hair that are compleatly black with coloured pencil. In my opinion you can get realistic shiny black hair without blending, you just need to keep your pencil sharp. Maybe it helps if you experiment and try out diffrent variations to draw hair on a seperat sheet of paper.

Awesome start on the drawing btw, it's going to be great either way.

[Zindy]

I definitely say no. I would stick with colour pencils only. The thing about mixing them is the different shine they have. Personally I don't like that mix much. If I were you I would go out and buy some colour pencils that are more mixable for the hair and eye lids. I hightly recommend Supracolor from Caran d'Ache, these mix incredible well.
I think the result would be so much better if you kept it all in colour pencils but that's just my opinion.
I could easily recognize her as Pery by the way

[oOXGraceXOo]

Thanks for the help, guys! I'm finished with most of the flowers, I just have some tiny purple ones in the upper left corner to do that I've been putting off. I think I'm going to pause production on this for a little bit until I can get my hands on better pencils, what I have is fine for everything else but for the hair I think it's pushing it. I may just get a couple of pencils in hair colors and maybe some flesh tones in case I want them for something else in the future because I really don't want to shell out the money for a whole set right now. (My word, that 120 piece set is absolutely drool worthy, love it!) I'm going to do some test locks of hair, (I'm just going to assume I can't use charcoal, it doesn't seem to work with anything. *laughs*) and see what looks the best. Thanks, to all of you!

[Zindy]

I think that is a good choice, let us know how it goes
I wouldn't mix charcoal with colour pencils either, charcoal is so dark and will seem too contrasted against the soft coloured flowers.