“What is your favorite brand of colored pencils?”
“What brand of pencils do you use?”
“Which pencils did you use to draw that?
“What brand of pencils do you recommend?”
These are the questions I get asked more than any and with good reason. A full set of artist-quality colored pencils is expensive! Choosing which brand of pencils to buy is the very first consideration for a beginning colored pencil artist and can make a BIG difference in the results you see in your first few drawings. There are so many brands and each professional artist seems to recommend a different brand which can make it difficult to decide. For more advanced artists, it can be a challenge to balance the desire for consistency in using a ‘go-to brand’ with the desire to experiment and test new brands as they are developed. And to complicate matters, colored pencils perform differently on different papers.
I wish there were one brand that I could consistently recommend as the only brand to buy but, the truth is, I like several different brands and like to take advantage of the different colors and characteristics they have to offer.
In today’s blog, I will be reviewing in detail the brands of pencils I use regularly. Keep in mind that these are my personal opinions. All of the pencils that I recommend are available ‘open-stock which means, you can buy one pencil at a time. I always recommend you buy a few pencils from a brand before you purchase an entire set. Beware of sets that aren’t available open-stock. What will you do when you run out of black? Buy a whole new set? And, by the way, you WILL run out of black:) And white, and olive green and crimson red and…
In my next few blog posts, I will be going into further detail about these brands discussing topics like:
- How I chose which pencil to use and when
- Color picking apps and tips on how to use them
- Creating color swatches
- Layering and blending these different brands of pencils and how to use them to their best advantage
In my final blog post about pencil brands, I will be sharing my personal ‘must haves’ from each of these lines.
But first things first! Here are my favorites:
Prismacolor Premier
Pros
- Inexpensive, $1.99 each
- Wide range of colors, 150
- Easy to blend
- Available Open-stock
Cons
- Low lightfast ratings
- Inconsistent quality
Prismacolor Premier pencils were the first set of pencils I ever purchased, so I am probably most familiar with this brand. I could tell you the name of most of the colors just by looking at them which makes it easy for me to work with them because as I am working on a drawing, I can think something like, “this just needs a bit of Prismacolor Artichoke…” They are inexpensive, blend well, work well with other pencils and have the largest range of colors of any of the brands. Too large, maybe, because there are several pencils that I have never/will never use- Non-Photo Blue??? Prismacolor pencils also have a bad reputation among many artists for their inconsistent quality and their poor lightfast ratings. If you are going to use Prismacolor pencils, you have to expect some level of frustration over breakage and quality control. However, if you are a beginning artist and/or are working on a tight budget, I would personally recommend these because I happen to love working with them! Prismacolor also sells a range of markers that corresponds with the colored pencil colors which can be very helpful if you like to use a marker base for your drawings.
Faber-Castell Polychromos
Pros
- Hard Lead Stays Sharp
- Inexpensive, 2.48 each
- Available Open-stock
- Wide Range of Colors, 120
- Better Lightfast Ratings
Cons
- Harder lead doesn’t blend as easily as waxier pencils
Polychromos are the mic-drop pencils for adding tiny details and crisp edges. No other pencil that I have tried does it better. You can sharpen them to a super-sharp point and they will hold that point without breaking. They work in perfect harmony with the softer, waxier pencils like Prismacolor, Luminance, and Derwent Drawing. They don’t blend quite as easily as the softer pencils and it takes more layers to build up enough pigment to blend them with solvent. They are relatively inexpensive and offer a wide range of colors open stock. And, there are very few colors that I don’t like/wouldn’t ever use in this set. I have never heard of another artist who didn’t love these pencils and they are very widely used and well-respected among colored pencil artists. Side note- these work really well on every type of paper I draw on including Clairefontaine Pastelmat.
Caran d’ache Luminance
Pros
- Available Open-stock
- Good Lightfast Ratings
- Easy to blend
Cons
- Expensive, $4.71 each
- Small color range, 76
If it weren’t for the fact that the Luminance color range was so small, this would probably be my go-to pencil for opaque coverage and blending. This is a professional pencil and has a really strong lightfast rating but the lack of many of the colors that I have become used to using from the Prismacolor and Polychromos lines keeps this from being my top pencil brand. Luminance is also the most expensive pencil that I currently use making them out of reach to many artists. They are very good pencils, though, and if you are looking to splurge, you can’t go wrong with this brand.
Derwent Drawing
Pros
- Very opaque
- Inexpensive, $2.02 each
- Easy to blend
- Available Open-stock
Cons
- Very small color range, 24
- Not good for details and sharp edges
These pencils are very creamy and soft, nearly crayon-like. Easy to blend and provide a thick, opaque coverage. One layer of these pencils tends to deposit more pigment than other pencils. This is a set of earthy, muted colors and I think the browns and tans are perfect if you want to draw fur. I also like them for drawing bark and stems. Because these have such a small color range, they would not be a good set to buy if you were only going to buy one set of pencils but they are really great to have as a supplement to your everyday pencils as they seem to be the ‘pencil that works’ when all others fail me.
2 of the pencils on my ‘must have list’ from this line are the:
- Black, which is perfect when you need something to be really dark black and you want a lot of coverage like a black background.
- Chinese White, which is a really great opaque white to add white highlights on top of darker layers. It is also a really good blending pencil.
Derwent Lightfast
Pros
- Nice and opaque
- Easy to blend
- Available open-stock
- Lightfast- obviously:)
- Wide range of colors, 100
Cons
- Expensive, $4.10 each
- Tips break easier than Polychromos
This is one of the newest lines of professional pencils to be introduced. Initially, there was a very limited number of Derwent Lightfast pencils available but Derwent has continued to increase the range, and now there is a very good range of 100 pencils. I was slow to get on board with this line in part because I am very happy with the results I can get with my go-to pencils and in part because they are very expensive and, initially, there was such limited availability. I did what I often do with new brands and purchased a handful of pencils to use on a project and, slowly, I have come to really love these pencils. Now I own two full sets:)
One of my favorite things about the Derwent Lightfast pencils is that the line of colors includes some really dark greens, blues, and purples- much darker than any other brand. This means that in a lot of cases, you can create really nice shadows without layering black or grey underneath. On the flip side, they also have some of the very best light colors which are great for those times when you need a hint of color on the tips of flowers or to create shadows on white flowers. These pencils are oil-based like, Polychromos, and when used on a toothy paper like Rising Museum Mount Board, they are very vibrant and beautiful.
That is my list! There are many other brands of quality pencils that I simply haven’t had time to work with enough to recommend including Lyra Rembrandt, Caran d’Ache Pablos, and Holbein. So many pencils, so little time:)
You can watch the 3-part tip video series that I created all about colored pencils by subscribing to my Patreon page at http://www.patreon.com/jennifermorrisonart
You can also find me on Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram by searching for Jennifer Morrison Art.
I hope you found this helpful! Please leave questions in the comments section below and I am happy to reply.
Jennifer
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