My Must-Have Pencils, Colored Pencils & Pastel Art Supplies

February is the month of love, of favorites, and of chocolate! Because of this, I’m highlighting some of my ‘favorites’ in this post - favorite dry media art supplies, that is. I’ll be covering pens and markers in a future post. Go grab a cup of your fav drink and a snack and have a read. If you want a list of ALL my favorite supplies, then jump to the bottom and hit subscribe to get a free pdf.

SOME OF MY FAVORITE ART SUPPLIES

PENCILS

PENCILS

Let’s start with the lowly, humble pencil. Where would artists be without one? I guess we’d be stuck with charcoal sticks, which isn’t bad. For years I drew with the handy dandy No.2 pencil - the bright yellow one, then black Ticonderogas. During college I discovered that ‘leads’ come in different hardnesses.

Lighter - 9H 8H 7H 6H 5H 4H 3H 2H H F - Darker

Lighter - HB B 2B 3B 4B 5B 6B 7B 8B 9B - Darker

I love drawing with softer leads - that is my personal preference. I want to include the darkest dark and the lightest light in my sketches, so choosing a pencil, say 4B or 6B is a great choice because it allows me to do that. Of course, the darker pencils also smudge easily, so you have to keep an index card for covering your work so your hand doesn’t drag across it.

Another tip is to use a mechanical pencil for line-work. I use mechanical pencils All. The. Time. I have them in 0.3mm, 0.5mm, 0.7mm, and 0.9mm leads, but I rarely use the 0.3mm one because the tip breaks too easily.

A favorite amongst illustrators and a favorite of mine is the Blacking Pencil. My dad used them and I used them as a kid - when he gave me his stubs. These retro pencils dating back to 1934 make you feel good about drawing. Your hand will glide across the paper like butter. They remind you why you love sketching. You feel part of a club, a clan of artists which stretches back into the past and included writers, musicians, and journalists as well, who used this pencil to pen their novels, classics, and essays. They have a cedar casing and come in multiple colors but always, always have a rectangular eraser.

CRAYONS

Let’s start with one of the first mark-makers we all tried as a kid. Crayons! But I’m not talking about ordinary crayons… nope, these are a grown-up kind. Caran d’Ache Neocolor II. They are the creamiest, most velvety and luxurious crayon you will ever use. And they are water soluble, which means you can paint with them! After layering colors on paper, try using a brush dipped in water for blending. Or you can shave tiny bits off the end of your tip and wet it until it becomes paint! I brought my set back from an amazing art store in Frankfurt called Boesner. If you go there, watch out - you will stuff your suitcase fuller than possible!

COLORED PENCILS

Berol Prismacolors and Faber Castell Colored Pencils — Berol Prismacolors on the left and Faber Castell on the right

The second art supply you probably used as a kid is colored pencils. I have loved colored pencils ever since one of my dad’s coworkers gave me a set when I was about 7 years old. There are so many brands out there which makes it difficult to know which are actually good. I define a good pencil as one which is soft, not hard, lays down a range of pigment from light to opaque, and can be layered on top by other pencils.

My favorites in order of top down are as follows:

Caran d’Ache Luminance (expensive)
Berol Prismacolors (excellent- I use these all the time)
Caran d’Ache Supracolor Soft (water soluble)
Faber Castell Polychromos (similar to Beryl)

If I were to have to choose just one set to buy, it would be Berol Prismacolors because they blend well, are full-pigmented, come in a multitude of colors, and are reasonably priced.

SOFT PASTELS AND OIL PASTELS

SOFT PASTELS/OIL PASTELS

To be honest, I don’t use pastels as much as I used to. In high school I used this medium a LOT for creating pictures of animals - a deer, a lynx, bunnies, etc. And back then, we used flocked paper. Egads! I’m not sure if that type of paper is even sold anymore, and I won’t cry about it. There are wonderful papers out there like Canson’s Mi-Teintes, Clairefontaine, Sennelier, Hahnemuhle,and even Strathmore that you can pick up at your local craft store.

My favorite soft pastel brands are Rembrandt and Sennelier. But a fun addition to your projects is trying out PanPastels. These little beauties look like compact makeup powder, and can be applied using sponge tip applicators - just like makeup! They come in lots of colors and they blend well.

As for oil pastels, I’ve only ever bought the cheap kind - which made me fell like a struggling kid again because they leave heavily textured marks, crumbly balls on every edge, bits of dark streaks where some dirt stuck to the tips when you stored them, and very bright (not so pretty) colors. But all that changed when I bought a set of 24 Portrait colors by Sennelier. These babies are gorgeous, luxurious, and fun to use.

SWATCH JOURNAL

If your collection of pens and pencils has grown, you may consider keeping a swatch journal like I’ve done. I just make a mark of every color in groupings or brands so that I can test them out and compare the color, bleed, fuzz factor, opacity, and line weight. Sometimes I just try out pencils at the back of a journal because we all know art supplies act differently according to the paper they are tried out on!

What types of pencils, crayons, colored pencils, and pastels do you like to use? Which are your favorites? I’d love to know. Pop a comment down below and share with everyone what you enjoy using.

That’s all for now, but stay tuned because my next art supply (probably April) post will be about markers and pens!

If you would like to have my secret list of all my favorite art supplies, hit subscribe down below, and I’ll send that to you - Free!

Thanks for reading, and now…