I had already talked about water color pencils, so am focusing now on colored pencils.  If you are not familiar with my channel, I am a crafter with physical limitations and I make videos to help others with similar issues to be able to find products that will work best or easiest for us.

The pricing is based on 48 count and you can certainly find smaller sets of all of these pencils.  I chose 48, because of the set of Marco Renoirs that I own and find that there are enough variations of color within that set to give you a nice mix to color with.  Also, the prices I found were the least expensive online and you might find them less expensive elsewhere.  I just did a Google search on them.  I buy all of these products myself, and am not paid by any retailers for using their products or for recommending their websites.  The information I give on this video is strictly my opinion.

Crayola at Walmart for 50 is $6.97 currently, and will probably be less expensive in back-to-school sales.

Artist’s Loft from Michaels is from a multi-media set of 126 pieces for $41.99 (before a coupon). There are 30 colored pencils in that set.  I found a set of 48 of them at Michaels for $23.99 before using a coupon.

Koh-I-Noor set of 24 woodless pencils (the largest set I could find) is $12.95 on Ebay.

Marco Renoir from Japan (I couldn’t find them in regular retailers) and they were $36.08 for 48 from Ebay.  You will need to keep in mind that they come from either Japan or Hong Kong, so there is a lag time in getting them (up to a month).

Prismacolor Premier 48 count is $27.97 + $4.95 shipping from Dickblick.com.

I found the Crayola pencils to have a decent pigment for the price, but were hard to use as they aren’t very waxy.  If they are affordable for you, you might want to try them.

The Artist Lofts aren’t very easy to use and the pigment in them is horrible.  This is by far the worst choice of these pencils.  I would not recommend them and I only bought them for the case they were in during a Christmas blow-out sale.

Koh-I-Noor–These are a great value as they are all pigment and no wood.  They are mainly primary colors so if you are looking for non-primary, this might not be the brand for you.  They are easier to use than the first two, and produce bold pigment, but I found my hand hurting after coloring with them for maybe thirty minutes.

Marco Renoir–These are nicely pigmented and waxy so easy to use.  I like this set and if I didn’t have a big set of the Prismacolors, probably would have bought a larger set of these.  They feel like they are a little bit smaller around than the Prismacolors so if you need a thicker pencil, you might want to go with with Prismacolors for the price difference.

Prismacolor Premiers–They have great pigment, and are waxy and easy to use.  I really like these pencils and recommend them highly.  I also really like to buy things at dickblick.com as their prices are usually the cheapest on the web for art products.  I like that they only charge flat rate of $4.95 for shipping as well. (I don’t get paid anything to say that either.)

I did not use any blending agents and only tried to blend with the pencils themselves.  I wanted the pencils to speak for themselves and could have added another twenty minutes in blending, but chose not to.  If you’d like to see a video with different blending techniques, I’d be happy to do one.

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