Choosing The Right Coloured Pencil Materials For YOU! Coloured Pencil Drawing

[Music]
hello everyone welcome back to my
channel so today's video is the first
episode in a new series that I'm doing
about how to improve your colored pencil
drawings so this is a series that I'm
going to be doing an episode for every
Tuesday which I now to my new upload
schedule video that I did yesterday so
if you want to know what my new upload
schedule is feel free to check that out
anyway so today's episode is the first
episode and I'm going to be going
through the pure basics so how to choose
the right materials for you so whether
that's color pencils or paper or any of
the other things like sharpeners I'm
going to be giving you my
recommendations of what I have found has
been best for me for different types of
my drawing needs so for example portrait
or landscape are we giving you my tip on
what kind of pencils I preferred for
each of those different things however
this is just my personal opinions of
what I found when I've used all these
different types of materials so if
you're still unsure before going and
buying them have a look at the other
videos on YouTube
to see if this consolidates your
thoughts anyway so whilst I'm giving you
my pips in the background I've got a
little video plane where I'm comparing
the prismacolor pencil brand and
polychromos because these are the two
brands that I get asked about so much so
much more than all the other brands so
I'm just doing a little comparison here
and I'm testing firstly how they blend
together so the first row is how they
blend using distension which is where
you just apply a lot of pressure to the
pencil to get the pencil to blend
together basically so I'm doing that
with firstly one color and then with two
colors and then in the second row I'm
using the zest bit pencil blends and I'm
using this for the paint brush just to
blend once again one color and then two
colors and then I am testing fine
details so which the pencils get the
finer points to get more detail work and
then I'm just going through the
opaqueness so how you can layer a
lighter color on top of the darker
colors and then finally I'm just going
through some pros and cons and the
expense of each of these different types
of colored pencils okay so the third
types of joins that I'm going to give my
opinions for our portrait drawings so
I've used three different kinds of color
pencil brands before when I've done
portrait drawings and they are the
prismacolor brands the sava castell
polychromos and the Karen - luminance
and I have used all of these and enjoyed
using all of these two portraits but I
do think that certain ones are better
than others so if I was a beginner and I
was choosing my color pencils again I
would go for the prisoner colors for
portraits purely because they are wax
based so they're really really creamy
which means that they are much easier to
blend and the fabric has velcro modes I
prefer to use the Karen - luminance but
I wouldn't recommend them for beginners
purely because they are so so expensive
so if you get the prisoner colors first
then you can really get to grips with
patched-in them because Karen -
luminance
have the same sort of properties so
their wax based as well so a really
creamy to blend with as well but they
are so expensive that for trial and
error it's better to use the prisoner
cause until you've got a hang of using
them and then buy some can - luminance
however if you do have the money and you
want to splash out on a bit more then I
would opt forget in this set of town -
luminance because they are much higher
quality and they have much better light
fastness ratings so light fastness
ratings are just how your colors are
going to last over time and so
prismacolor pens have quite low light
fastness ratings for most of its clip
pencils which means that they are prone
to fading quite a lot over time but for
beginners I will worry too much about
this because you just want to get a feel
for the medium and learn how to use it
and then you can invest in some better
quality pencils so the set that I would
recommend starting off with is called
the portrait set by prismacolor and this
is a 24 pencil set I believe and this
has all of the portrait colors that you
might need and this is a really good set
to start off with because it holds all
of those portrait colors and it's quite
cheap and then if you want to get a
basic set of 12 or 36 to have a larger
range colors then you can do that but
with those smaller sets you don't get
all the portrait colors that you might
need the reason that I would have really
recommend fibre castell polychromos for
portraits if you're a beginner is
because they are oil based which means
they have a harder lid and so they are
harder to blend them the wax based
pencils so I have used fabric
castell polychromos serve portraits and
I didn't really like them as much I'm
going to try and use them again because
I've ordered a new blender which i think
will work really well with them but I've
also found that they don't have a great
range of skin tone values but there
might be just because I haven't
particularly had a lot of practice with
them because I've been using the Karen -
quite a lot so I'm going to practice
again doing portraits with Pavel castell
polychromos but again for beginners I
think that Prisma colors are really easy
to use and get the hang of however there
is one thing that you have to be a bit
careful with when using prismacolor and
that is something called wax bloom so
what white bloom is is that once you've
done your draw in a few hours after or a
day or so later you will get this waxy
film lay on the top of your drawing and
it will really fade it and make it look
really wash out and it will just be
where those wax has raised up on top of
the pencil and just form this waxy layer
but that is really easy to clean off
what you have to do is you get tissue
and I'm going to show you some example
of where wax bloom has formed on some of
my drawings so always check if you're
using prismacolor check the drawing a
few hours later or a few days later if
there's not one after a few hours and
just see if a white bloom has formed so
here you can see this was a drawing that
I did from storks and on her jacket you
can see it's a bit lighter and I'm going
to rub it over with a tissue and you can
see how it just goes so much darker and
that's because of white top top wax
bloom and it's the same with her hair so
I'm going to show you her hair and
that's going to also be quite washed out
but when I go over it with that tissue
it just lifts that wax right off and you
can see those rich colors again which
they were before so always make sure
that you've checked to see it fails or
wax bloom okay so the next type of
drawing that I want to talk about is
wildlife and landscapes because I'm
going to recommend the same pencils for
both of them so for wildlife if you'll
draw in any types of animals
I really recommend using the Stuber
castell polychromos that's because these
pencils hold their point really well and
you can get really fine detail which is
really good if you drew in animals and
there's lots of different strands of fur
or whiskers or little details that you
want to get on them so with drawings
work landscapes or wildlife and you do
need to blend things so smoothly you
really want those sharp edges then I
really recommend the fabric a stile
polychromos they're really good at
layering so when you're using a solvent
at best with solvents they don't do
particularly well when you burnish them
as you can see they blend much better
when you use a solvent and if you use a
solvent you can just add lots and lots
of layers if you're using the right
paper so I'm going to go through some
papers that I recommend in a minute so
yeah I definitely recommend using the
fabric a style polychromos with
landscapes and wildlife so you can start
off by getting a smaller set maybe the
3624 set but then I'd also go and buy
some open stock pencils where you can
buy them individually and get some more
of those natural earthy tones as well to
add to your collection so some of the
Browns and maybe the greens if you're
doing landscapes through those colors
that you're going to have to use a lot
in those landscapes or wildlife drawings
okay so the next type of drawings is
what but if you want to do portraits and
include elements of wildlife and
landscapes within that well I would
recommend going with the prismacolor
portrait set which is going for about 24
pound online and on Amazon so it's
really cheap and then maybe get small
set of travel castell polychromos or
just order a few of them open stock some
of your greener tones or your browner
tones to help you so you can do
landscapes and that is well with your
portraits or if you just want to go for
one set and one brand I would recommend
going for the fabric a stile polychromos
because they do have a nice range of
portrait colors and I have seen people
get really nice portraits using the
toggle castell polychromos so I would go
to them over the Prisma colors because
you can do a lot of detailed work and do
portraits with them and finally the last
type of drawing that I want to talk
about is cartoon and the animated
drawings so if you want to do cartoon
work I recommend the prisoner colors
because they are really creamy and blend
well and the lay down of the coat is
really nice and easy if you want to do
those blocked colors you can get a
really smooth application so that is
what I recommend for cartoon works
because Sava castile will just be too
hard to blend and get that smooth
transition that you need when you're
doing cartoons so for the type of tapes
that you might want to use I've use a
few different types and these are ones
that I like so bristol vellum paper
which the
400 series by Strathmore is one of my
favorites and I think this works well
whether you're doing cartoons portraits
or even landscapes and I've used it on
such a wide variety of my drawings that
I think it's a really good all-round
type of paper so no matter what type of
drawing you're doing I think that's a
really good option for cartoon an
animated work I think the tone tan paper
by Strathmore is also really good
because it just helps the cartoons to
really pop and then lastly I use a lot
of sticker paper from using watercolor
but one that's really good if you just
want to do color pencil and you want to
do like a landscape or portraits with
landscapes is the Fabriano artistic Oh
hot press watercolor paper that is
really good and has a nice tooth to hold
color pencil WAMP I've also heard that
the Stonehenge paper is really difficult
pencils as well but I've not personally
tried that out
as for sharpeners I really recommend an
electric sharpener because you can ask
to sharpen so many pencils that it's
much easier just to have an electric
sharpener rather than manually do them
anyway guys that's it for this week's
episode next week I'm going to be
showing you how you can use the color
wheel to get the most out of a small
range of color pencils so make sure you
subscribe to my channel if you're new so
you don't miss out on that anyway guys
thank you so much for watching and I'll
see you soon bye
you