best colouring pencils

What are the best colouring pencils to buy for colouring books?

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Pencils ain’t pencils Sol.

Not all coloured pencils are equal and depending on your taste, not all will be the best fit for any one person. I have tried many but not all and my preference to date is for a water soluble pencil with as much pigment strength as possible. My favourites to date are Derwent Inktense pencils. You can use these like watercolour as the ink dilutes into a rich fluid colour. If I were limited to owning one set of pencils this would be my choice. But let’s talk about need not want for a moment…
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Yellow and pink used to create orange. Purple added at edges.
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Yellow and aqua used to create green.
Yellow added at the end to make it glow.
Dark blue to shade edges.
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Dark blue used to shade shape.
Then aqua lightly overlay on some parts.
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One colour – no blending of colour.
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Coloured in green, then shaded with dark blue. Ran over the leaf with yellow to make the green more lime coloured and brighter.
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Are the best colouring pencils for colouring may be the least expensive?

You don’t need a large set to create colourful art. A small set contains a range of the main colours: yellows, reds and blues. With most small sets of pencils you can mix colours to make more if you carefully blend them together. You can also mix some pencils with other similar but different brands. The best colouring pencils are the ones you can afford and that do the job.

I deliberately uses less expensive pencils on my sample page to show that a big budget for pencils isn’t necessary for colouring. I used 8 colours. This quantity is more than enough to get a range of colour. Although it is nice to have a large range of colours to choose from, I only use a limited amount in any one work anyway. My habit is to mix colours rather than use ready made colour. Mixing gives more life to the end colour if you don’t overdo it.

I used an aqua, 2x dark blues, green, yellow, pink, red and purple. I could have used only one dark blue. In fact, if I had the end result would have been much better. The pencils used is Faber Castell’s Classic Colour pencils. You can pick up a 48 pencil set for about $20!

If you want the exact colours they were: 207, 329, 361, 345, 344, 321, 366 and 334

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Spending big?

If you have dollars to spend you may want to buy the Faber Castell Polychromos or the Derwent Colour Soft, but these will do if money is tight. The reason I didn’t mention Prismacolours is that i have seen too many reviews about the drop in quality of these since last year and I know many artists have changed to the Polychromos as a result. They may not be the best colouring pencils in the world but they did the job. I deliberately chose them for the price. I find them great for keeping a sharp point for some time. Less sharpening means your pencils will last longer – even better value! And they didn’t break on me either.

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Bright colours on the cheap…

To get the density of the colour I built it up slowly. I avoided shine by going gently at first and only applying considerable pressure at the end. I worked on copy paper for this demonstration as most people would be using the sample printable on this paper. I’m looking forward to using my soluble pencils on the book when it arrives as it is nice thick wood-free paper.

There you go, you don’t have to spend a bucket load of money on the best coloured pencils on the market to get going and get colouring. Don’t feel like you’re missing out, if you don’t have hundreds to spend on premium pencils. I have the expensive ones as I have to use the best pigment if I sell work. This insures my work is less likely to fade on a customer. Nowadays we photograph everything and so it is less of an issue for colouring book use, journaling or practicing art.
If funds are limited you are best to spend it on a nice colouring book or quality paper stock than a ton of pencils. Now go raid the kids cupboard for all the spare pencils and test them out!
If you want to read more extensively on colour pencils and markers I have an updates article here: Colouring Pencils and Markers: My Favourites

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