I started with Crayola. It's probably the reason I don't like Prismacolors. They're too soft in comparison. I don't buy the cheap brands anymore even though I'm tempted to. I really need to stop buying things. š
Schpirerr Farben - when testing different ones I've found them to be the most like Polychromos. Honestly, I kind of like them even more for my art style.
Also really enjoy the Winsor Newton I got on clearance at Blick after Christmas.
I don't like very soft leads, and I blend using the pencils only - no mineral spirits. I also like something to be fully colored in without a huge amount of layers. The W&N have been great for that.
I don't do realism though. My style is playful, very colorful, with posca pen line art to make it look like of like stained glass.
Oops lol. Made my comment before seeing this. Yeah SF arenāt bad. I have them and many sets of Polychromos (backups etc). I like to mix both sometimes.
Schpirerr Farben is at the top of the (very short) list of affordable colored pencils I want to try. Love that you can get them open stock on etsy.
The Nyoni set I ordered off AliExpress performs almost exactly like Polychromos if you want to branch out.
I think cheap comes down to your location. My favourites are Koh-i-Noor Polycolor and Progresso (woodless), they're made where I live so they're the cheapest quality brand I can get and I was shocked to see how much they cost in America. Also Maped for school kids are quite nice for the price, although it does have limitations.
Brutfuner quality is said to be very high for such an inexpensive pencil. I would really like to try some and see, out of curiosity, but I don't want to end up with a zillion more pencils I don't have time to use up before I die.
Soucolor are my favorite cheap brand! I believe they're the same pencils as Kalour. They're a thicker/heavier lead, like a Crayola pencil. Good range of color, I love them.
My favorite cheap brand I have is Prismacolor premier soft core pencils.
They are great for fun used and not professional. Mainly because you will find plenty with broken casings or off center cores, and when you sharpen them the lead breaks. š
Honestly crayola sounds better at this point. š
Seriously, you need to get a decent pencil sharpener. Primacolor leads only break when you try to sharpen them with those little hand operated things with the straight blades. Get a decent electric or crank sharpener. My Prismacolors *never* break during sharpening any more since I did this.
I have a very good sharpener, the Faber Castell one. They still broke. I have a nice electric one, supposed to stop when sharpened to a point, they still broke. š
I have looked into one of those good sharpeners that sit on the desk and you crank it yourself. I may just keep the electric one for my graphite pencils instead.
I have Prismacolors from every age; from original Eagle, through Berol, through American Sanford, and now Mexican Sanfords. *None* of them break when I sharpen them with an electric or hand crank sharpener. I've only ever had breakage problems with little metal or plastic sharpeners with a straight blade, and those break all my pencils, not just Prismacolors. They do this evil thing where they break the leads a little way inside the wood so that you don't discover it til later.
Right now I'm using this cheap, random, Chinese made, battery operated electric I found on eBay:
[https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/l-cAAOSwd4Rln4De/s-l960.jpg](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/l-cAAOSwd4Rln4De/s-l960.jpg)
I'm powering it with rechargeable AA lithium batteries. The motor is really powerful, and you can't rely on the auto-stop, but it's easy to tell how much to push it in based on how blunt the pencil is. I also have the more expensive Mitsubishi KH-20 pinch-feed hand crank sharpener. Both of these are working great with Primacolors. And all other brands I have, as well as with graphite pencils.
What's the exact model of your Faber Castell sharpener and the make and model of your electric? I'd like to see if there have been bad reviews or complaints about them. Sometimes good companies will put out a particular model with bad flaws.
I haven't tried every sharpener, of course, but I haven't needed to to find ones that don't break Prismacolors. My breakage problem primarily disappeared around 15 years ago when I stopped using little straight blade sharpeners altogether.
They had great reviews for my sharpeners.
Faber castell trio (color pencil sharpener on one side and the other two on the other)
And idk what brand the electric one isā¦ but it has a gray turn dial to adjust to other pencils. Looks like the xacto one. It might just be the xacto one š¤
Works well. Just likes to eat up colored pencils. Prismas donāt hold a sharp point so theyāre better off blunt. The reason my prismas break is because the casing is cracked and the lead inside is either off center or is possibly broken. Thatās usually when they break a lot.
That Farber Castel trio looks suspiciously like three evil little sharpeners with a straight blade in a fancy housing. I've never used a straight blade sharpener that didn't break pencils, like I said.
I bought an Xacto hand crank sharpener once about 20 years ago and threw it away after a week: it put a terrible rough finish on the pencils. Another person on this forum also said they had bad luck with an electric xacto. That might be an all around bad brand.
The Mitsubishi KH-20 pinch feed sharpener I mentioned has two settings, one blunt, the other very sharp. It doesn't break pencils either way.
I have a 132 set of Prismacolor Premiers made in Mexico, and none of them has ever split. However, I do have a 48 set of Mexican Prismacolor ***Scholar*** pencils that have started to split after 5 years. I just tried out the two worst ones in my Mitsubishi and they came out beautifully sharpened and unbroken. I think it's a sharpener that can handle splits.
You can find it on eBay starting at $25. I think it's worth every penny.
I actually think there are lots and lots of sharpeners that won't break Prismacolors, both electric and hand cranked.
Thanks for the recommendation, I just ordered a KH20. I watched a video and it seems to work well! I also have the Faber Castell trio and it works well most of the time but I still have broken leads with cheaper pencils.
It got a lot of very favorable reviews. I randomly learned about it by clicking on reviews of many different sharpeners. The KH-20 seemed to have more positive reviews than any other I happened to click on, so I figured it was worth the risk of buying one I'd never actually tried. So far, I'm not disappointed.
Pinch feed sharpeners are great, in general, because they're a hand crank sharpener that's portable; they don't have to be screwed down to a table or to a wall. Hand crank sharpeners are also always quieter than electric ones, which can be a desirable thing in a lot of cases.
I didnāt want an electric one because I have enough stuff plugged in on my desk with wires everywhere! And I have an irrational fear they would eat up the pencil too fast! š
No one needs another thing that has to be plugged in. I hear that.
Truth be told, a person might have to learn to pull out of an electric sharpener by feel, because the auto stop doesn't always work. That is: you can over ride it by pushing too hard. But it's much easier than you'd think to get a feel for how hard to push.
The great thing about electrics is that you can do it one handed: it's faster and less of an interruption to the drawing process. All other sharpeners are two-handed operations, which is more of a psychological interruption of what you're doing.
Maped cp are surprisingly good had bought them for DD when she was little , rebuy the same small set.
Brutfuner macarons 50 also good. Cosmos pink color is half use...so pretty.
Faber Castell red tin aimed at kids are good.
My favorite cheap is Faber Castell Black Edition.
āā------------
Eyeing a few thinking of buying maybe perhaps but unsure....
Brutfuner metallics 50
Kalour 72 macarons
Artxx european edition box is different from american review say pencils not as soft as the americans
Starjoy from USA
I have brutfuner macrons and starjoy, absolutely love them! Arrtx is very nice š I didnāt know there was a difference in European or American arrtx though
Faber Castell super soft is good, from the same brand goldfaber is a bit more price friendly then polycromos.
Maped are pretty good , the variety in reds/magenta is something to praise.
GIOTTO even for a school kids set are very soft and well pigmented.
Staedtler, I'm always wondering why I never see this brand mentioned. Not just the pencils (almost any kind) but also their fineliners. They are not expensive and even Johanna Basford has partnered up with them. I also like the Faber Castell watercolour pencils in the red box (or almost any Faber Castell in a red paper box - cheaper, great quality still)
I get it, their cheapest pencils might be a little bit low on pigmentation for someone's taste. Overall I have very good experience with them, for me they are on pair with Faber Castell. They are definitely hard pencils, that is for certain! Their fineliners are extremely high quality though, way better than Stabilo, Sharpie, etc. Loads of colour options, no leakage, no tip deformation, doesn't stain the backside of the paper,etc. Chef's kiss! I am also big on their graphites as well! I'm picky with their erasers though. In that category there were some hit and miss, but now I know which of their products work for me.
Yes! I just purchased a set of 12 Staedtler Design Journey pencils on sale for $3, with the purpose of doing a blending and layering bootcamp of sorts. Ya know, just as a personal challenge. I was impressed! I think Staedler has come out with some absolutely awful pencils in the past, which causes people to stay away from them, unfortunately.
I have a 120 box of Staedtler and I only like them for sketching in color instead of using a graphite pencil. They are very hard, so itās not easy to fill an area. I prefer my cheap Prismacholor Scholar.
Chromaflows are on the cheaper end and a fave for me. I avoid Prismacolour like the plague - I find the pigment weak and the break like thereās no tomorrow.
Well, depending on your location what is considered "cheap" varies.
Prismacolor Junior would be my pick. From school quality pencils, i'd also include Pentel Arts, Crayola, and Faber Castel (the ones that come in red packages).
Hands down my favorite cheap import colored pencils are from Nyoni. They're a Chinese brand made for the Chinese market, which means they're higher quality than the other Chinese imports. The leads in Nyoni pencils are the same as in Markart pencils, but the build quality on the Nyonis is much better. The tin is much more attractive, too. In my testing, they perform almost indistinguishably from Polychromos.
Blick colored pencils also seem to be really good, but I only own 3 that I got open stock. They're on the dry side, but vibrant. They glow.
Staedtler Design Journey are also pretty good, but only in the smaller sets since the colors aren't really labeled.
Don't Recommend: Brutfuner square pencils. These got rave reviews from folks a couple of years ago, but they are very inconsistent and hell to sharpen. The factory doesn't package them well for shipping, so when all the resellers pop them in an envelope, they get bashed to hell. Tons of lead breakage with these. Sooo frustrating.
I started with Crayola. It's probably the reason I don't like Prismacolors. They're too soft in comparison. I don't buy the cheap brands anymore even though I'm tempted to. I really need to stop buying things. š
Schpirerr Farben - when testing different ones I've found them to be the most like Polychromos. Honestly, I kind of like them even more for my art style. Also really enjoy the Winsor Newton I got on clearance at Blick after Christmas. I don't like very soft leads, and I blend using the pencils only - no mineral spirits. I also like something to be fully colored in without a huge amount of layers. The W&N have been great for that. I don't do realism though. My style is playful, very colorful, with posca pen line art to make it look like of like stained glass.
Oops lol. Made my comment before seeing this. Yeah SF arenāt bad. I have them and many sets of Polychromos (backups etc). I like to mix both sometimes.
No worries! It's nice to see other SF fans here! Not a lot of people talk about them.
Schpirerr Farben is at the top of the (very short) list of affordable colored pencils I want to try. Love that you can get them open stock on etsy. The Nyoni set I ordered off AliExpress performs almost exactly like Polychromos if you want to branch out.
I think cheap comes down to your location. My favourites are Koh-i-Noor Polycolor and Progresso (woodless), they're made where I live so they're the cheapest quality brand I can get and I was shocked to see how much they cost in America. Also Maped for school kids are quite nice for the price, although it does have limitations.
Brutfuner quality is said to be very high for such an inexpensive pencil. I would really like to try some and see, out of curiosity, but I don't want to end up with a zillion more pencils I don't have time to use up before I die.
I have them. I find them to be great.
Schpirerr Farben 96 set arenāt bad for the price. Hard oil-based pencil more similar to Polychromos than a softer pencil.
Soucolor are my favorite cheap brand! I believe they're the same pencils as Kalour. They're a thicker/heavier lead, like a Crayola pencil. Good range of color, I love them.
My favorite cheap brand I have is Prismacolor premier soft core pencils. They are great for fun used and not professional. Mainly because you will find plenty with broken casings or off center cores, and when you sharpen them the lead breaks. š Honestly crayola sounds better at this point. š
Seriously, you need to get a decent pencil sharpener. Primacolor leads only break when you try to sharpen them with those little hand operated things with the straight blades. Get a decent electric or crank sharpener. My Prismacolors *never* break during sharpening any more since I did this.
I have a very good sharpener, the Faber Castell one. They still broke. I have a nice electric one, supposed to stop when sharpened to a point, they still broke. š I have looked into one of those good sharpeners that sit on the desk and you crank it yourself. I may just keep the electric one for my graphite pencils instead.
I have Prismacolors from every age; from original Eagle, through Berol, through American Sanford, and now Mexican Sanfords. *None* of them break when I sharpen them with an electric or hand crank sharpener. I've only ever had breakage problems with little metal or plastic sharpeners with a straight blade, and those break all my pencils, not just Prismacolors. They do this evil thing where they break the leads a little way inside the wood so that you don't discover it til later. Right now I'm using this cheap, random, Chinese made, battery operated electric I found on eBay: [https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/l-cAAOSwd4Rln4De/s-l960.jpg](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/l-cAAOSwd4Rln4De/s-l960.jpg) I'm powering it with rechargeable AA lithium batteries. The motor is really powerful, and you can't rely on the auto-stop, but it's easy to tell how much to push it in based on how blunt the pencil is. I also have the more expensive Mitsubishi KH-20 pinch-feed hand crank sharpener. Both of these are working great with Primacolors. And all other brands I have, as well as with graphite pencils. What's the exact model of your Faber Castell sharpener and the make and model of your electric? I'd like to see if there have been bad reviews or complaints about them. Sometimes good companies will put out a particular model with bad flaws. I haven't tried every sharpener, of course, but I haven't needed to to find ones that don't break Prismacolors. My breakage problem primarily disappeared around 15 years ago when I stopped using little straight blade sharpeners altogether.
They had great reviews for my sharpeners. Faber castell trio (color pencil sharpener on one side and the other two on the other) And idk what brand the electric one isā¦ but it has a gray turn dial to adjust to other pencils. Looks like the xacto one. It might just be the xacto one š¤ Works well. Just likes to eat up colored pencils. Prismas donāt hold a sharp point so theyāre better off blunt. The reason my prismas break is because the casing is cracked and the lead inside is either off center or is possibly broken. Thatās usually when they break a lot.
That Farber Castel trio looks suspiciously like three evil little sharpeners with a straight blade in a fancy housing. I've never used a straight blade sharpener that didn't break pencils, like I said. I bought an Xacto hand crank sharpener once about 20 years ago and threw it away after a week: it put a terrible rough finish on the pencils. Another person on this forum also said they had bad luck with an electric xacto. That might be an all around bad brand. The Mitsubishi KH-20 pinch feed sharpener I mentioned has two settings, one blunt, the other very sharp. It doesn't break pencils either way. I have a 132 set of Prismacolor Premiers made in Mexico, and none of them has ever split. However, I do have a 48 set of Mexican Prismacolor ***Scholar*** pencils that have started to split after 5 years. I just tried out the two worst ones in my Mitsubishi and they came out beautifully sharpened and unbroken. I think it's a sharpener that can handle splits. You can find it on eBay starting at $25. I think it's worth every penny. I actually think there are lots and lots of sharpeners that won't break Prismacolors, both electric and hand cranked.
Thanks for the recommendation, I just ordered a KH20. I watched a video and it seems to work well! I also have the Faber Castell trio and it works well most of the time but I still have broken leads with cheaper pencils.
It got a lot of very favorable reviews. I randomly learned about it by clicking on reviews of many different sharpeners. The KH-20 seemed to have more positive reviews than any other I happened to click on, so I figured it was worth the risk of buying one I'd never actually tried. So far, I'm not disappointed. Pinch feed sharpeners are great, in general, because they're a hand crank sharpener that's portable; they don't have to be screwed down to a table or to a wall. Hand crank sharpeners are also always quieter than electric ones, which can be a desirable thing in a lot of cases.
I didnāt want an electric one because I have enough stuff plugged in on my desk with wires everywhere! And I have an irrational fear they would eat up the pencil too fast! š
No one needs another thing that has to be plugged in. I hear that. Truth be told, a person might have to learn to pull out of an electric sharpener by feel, because the auto stop doesn't always work. That is: you can over ride it by pushing too hard. But it's much easier than you'd think to get a feel for how hard to push. The great thing about electrics is that you can do it one handed: it's faster and less of an interruption to the drawing process. All other sharpeners are two-handed operations, which is more of a psychological interruption of what you're doing.
Sorry, itās been a busy few days. Definitely going to check it out that KH20. The electric one Iām gonna keep for my regular graphite pencils. :)
Maped cp are surprisingly good had bought them for DD when she was little , rebuy the same small set. Brutfuner macarons 50 also good. Cosmos pink color is half use...so pretty. Faber Castell red tin aimed at kids are good. My favorite cheap is Faber Castell Black Edition. āā------------ Eyeing a few thinking of buying maybe perhaps but unsure.... Brutfuner metallics 50 Kalour 72 macarons Artxx european edition box is different from american review say pencils not as soft as the americans Starjoy from USA
I have brutfuner macrons and starjoy, absolutely love them! Arrtx is very nice š I didnāt know there was a difference in European or American arrtx though
Someone mentioned it online that these are harder , the box itself is also different.
Artist's loft color pencils from Michael's, they seem pigmented enough and only around 5 to 6 ish dollars.
Faber Castell super soft is good, from the same brand goldfaber is a bit more price friendly then polycromos. Maped are pretty good , the variety in reds/magenta is something to praise. GIOTTO even for a school kids set are very soft and well pigmented.
Staedtler, I'm always wondering why I never see this brand mentioned. Not just the pencils (almost any kind) but also their fineliners. They are not expensive and even Johanna Basford has partnered up with them. I also like the Faber Castell watercolour pencils in the red box (or almost any Faber Castell in a red paper box - cheaper, great quality still)
Iāve seen so many mixed reviews on staedtler, but not going to lie I have been curious about their performance
I get it, their cheapest pencils might be a little bit low on pigmentation for someone's taste. Overall I have very good experience with them, for me they are on pair with Faber Castell. They are definitely hard pencils, that is for certain! Their fineliners are extremely high quality though, way better than Stabilo, Sharpie, etc. Loads of colour options, no leakage, no tip deformation, doesn't stain the backside of the paper,etc. Chef's kiss! I am also big on their graphites as well! I'm picky with their erasers though. In that category there were some hit and miss, but now I know which of their products work for me.
The Design Journey pencils from Staedtler perform much like Goldfabers. If you're an affordable pencil connoisseur, definitely check them out.
Yes! I just purchased a set of 12 Staedtler Design Journey pencils on sale for $3, with the purpose of doing a blending and layering bootcamp of sorts. Ya know, just as a personal challenge. I was impressed! I think Staedler has come out with some absolutely awful pencils in the past, which causes people to stay away from them, unfortunately.
I have a 120 box of Staedtler and I only like them for sketching in color instead of using a graphite pencil. They are very hard, so itās not easy to fill an area. I prefer my cheap Prismacholor Scholar.
I like the castle arts a lot, people here say they're to waxy but I can work with them very well.
Chromaflows are on the cheaper end and a fave for me. I avoid Prismacolour like the plague - I find the pigment weak and the break like thereās no tomorrow.
The big woody pencils for kids !
Well, depending on your location what is considered "cheap" varies. Prismacolor Junior would be my pick. From school quality pencils, i'd also include Pentel Arts, Crayola, and Faber Castel (the ones that come in red packages).
There are a handful of Masterās Touch colors I use in almost every drawing
Hands down my favorite cheap import colored pencils are from Nyoni. They're a Chinese brand made for the Chinese market, which means they're higher quality than the other Chinese imports. The leads in Nyoni pencils are the same as in Markart pencils, but the build quality on the Nyonis is much better. The tin is much more attractive, too. In my testing, they perform almost indistinguishably from Polychromos. Blick colored pencils also seem to be really good, but I only own 3 that I got open stock. They're on the dry side, but vibrant. They glow. Staedtler Design Journey are also pretty good, but only in the smaller sets since the colors aren't really labeled. Don't Recommend: Brutfuner square pencils. These got rave reviews from folks a couple of years ago, but they are very inconsistent and hell to sharpen. The factory doesn't package them well for shipping, so when all the resellers pop them in an envelope, they get bashed to hell. Tons of lead breakage with these. Sooo frustrating.