Can you paint with watercolor over colored pencil without messing up the artwork?

i made this great picture with colored pencils and i want to color the background a water color blue but will it smear the colored pencil?Can you paint with watercolor over colored pencil without messing up the artwork?
Unfortunately, yes. If you touch some water on top of regular colored pencils, the color would smear, sometimes remaining so and would be difficult to remove.





What you can do is to use the watercolor carefully and around your subject to create the background. Another is to create a ';mask'; over your subjects.





You could do this using a simple paper and trace only the outsides of your subject. Once traced, cut the outline, leaving only the traced object, now cut-out. Keep your hand over the traced, cut-out and use the watercolor freely, but still cautiously because the water could still get underneath the paper, smearing your colored pencils.





Sorry this is long, but I hope it helps :)Can you paint with watercolor over colored pencil without messing up the artwork?
Colored pencils (normal ones, *not* colored pencils that are advertised as being water soluble) use a wax base, similar to crayon (but with more pigment), so water shouldn't have any effect on the pencil. If the pencil is laid down thinly, the watercolor may color the tiny spaces within the pencil mark that aren't covered by wax - if it's laid down thick, the watercolor should bead on top and be easy to rub or dab off.
Your first answer about testing it out is good. I personally have never found coloured pencils to smear unless they are watercolour pencils designed for that purpose, or possibly the very cheap ones that give a powdery finish. If you can paint over them though it alters the colour a bit, so it probably is best just to paint the background. A problem might be if you haven't used the right sort of paper to take watercolour well.
I'm not sure about colored pencils. I often draw with crayons, and do water color over it though, it turns out really neat.








You should test it out. Take a scrap paper and doodle with colored pencil, then paint over it. We don't want you to ruin your picture!








Good luck!