Pencils seem to be a favorite medium for colorist and with good reason. Although, I had my doubts at first. That's because I started out with a horrible set of old, cheap kids pencils that Tom had lying around. I thought all pencils were the same because I tend not to buy into any marketing hype of "our product is better because it costs more."
Now, I've seen sets that run as much as close to a $1,000 and I still think that is excessive just to color a drawing that someone else created. However, there are differences between student and artist grade, dollar store and brand pencils. Mainly, it's because having more pigment in the "lead" costs more money to make. While there are brands that perform better than others, higher cost among the brands does not necessarily denote an increase in performance.
Also, there are differences between oil-based, wax-based and clay-based pencils. I won't bore you with those details as people who know way more about this than I do have already written about it. Plus, "better" performance also depends on how the colorist uses pencils.
There's one thing that still bugs me about pencils though: When you ask around for recommendations, people generally mention only a handful of brands, four at best. For the longest time, I was under the impression that only a handful of brands existed.
Then I came across this link: As you can see, there are dozen of different color pencils. I asked in a coloring group why people did not talk about other brands, but that inquiry was not well-met. I understand that not everything is accessible to everyone, but this was an international forum and surely different countries have different things available? I'm in many international adult coloring groups and people still focus on the same brands.
And that brings me back to my dislike of marketing hype. Just because somebody does not talk about something or promote it, does not mean it's not any good.
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