Coloured pencils waxing lyrical

For those of you who have been following my progress with my pet portraiture course I thought I would update you. I have been working with coloured pencils for this part of the course. Who would have thought a common or garden pencil would turn out to be so difficult to use. But then the point of this exercises is to push myself into new areas and learn new skills. Coloured pencils seem to be a little tricky. They need to be layered to produce many of the colours and textured needed. Unfortunately there is a problem with wax build up if you use too many layers. Argh! Once the wax has 'built up' it is much more difficult to apply more layers or detail on top. This is the problem I have hit right now. The question is 'how do you build up colour without getting wax build up?' Much more practice will be needed with them. Meantime I am taking a break from them to try pastels.

The pictures here are some of the colour pencil pieces I have been trying to create. The kestrel was done on NOT watercolour paper (big mistake - too bumpy), the rabbit was my first, experimental piece. He looks like he has just had a trip to the hairdresser and has come out with puffy fur. The dog is my work in progress. The fur is improving but the wax build up in the lower left quadrant is the problem I mentioned above. I guess I can only improve with time.