Looking for advice on which coloured pencil brand(s) to buy?

Help and advice is at hand if so....

For those who are not aware, I also have an official 'Step by Step Art' website that allows you to book an art workshop, or read one of my articles, that cover a plethora of art related subjects including coloured pencils, paper reviews and pastel reviews too. The article section is still in the early stages but I will continue to add more articles as often as possible.  My latest article focus's on coloured pencil brands, as I trial a selection of coloured pencil brands, which I currently have in my personal collection. 

Read the Article by clicking the image above - opens in a new window

This article shows the 5 most important factors that I look for when selecting my professional pencil range:

• I need to have a range that allows multiple layering
• I need them to blend well for backgrounds and skin tones
• Will work well with fixative
• The pencils must be extremely lightfast and the colours strong
• Need soft and hard pencils for different areas of my work

The 5 'tests' shown in this article includes:

1. Black & White Test
2. Hardness V's Softness
3. 10 layer test - 'Mixed' layering
4. Fixative test
5. Blendability

This article also gives information on the importance of paper weight (gsm), information on each pencil including costs (GBP) and lightfast ratings as well as my own thoughts on 'adapting to coloured pencils' . I hope that this will be of help to all coloured pencil artists out there from those starting out looking to buy their first range to those interested in how each brand compares to the others.  

The very popular Prismacolor Premier & Verithin ranges will also be added to this article very soon and an adaptation of this article (with even more information in) will be available to view and purchase (download or hard copy) from the USA's Colored pencil Magazine 'Student' version in the next few months.
Find out more about this magazine here: Colored pencil magazine - Student Edition

Read the Article 'Comparing Coloured pencils' here