“Which brand is the best?” This is a common doubt for everyone who wants to start with colour pencils. There are a lot of brands and types out there waiting to be tried out. I have used only a few brands and here is my account on them.
My first colour pencils were the common Natraj tiny colour pencils, but I don’t think they are good for an artist, as they are meant for kids who are trying their first hand in colour pencils. Children need to first gain control of their hand while drawing and shading, before proceeding to use artist-level mediums such as paint.
Why can’t a child start right away with good and costly colour pencils?
Many parents are ambitious and might want to buy only high quality and costly art supplies for their kids. But a child must first get used to the usual basic mediums and its most basic type before getting into all the high-quality stuff. Let him/her start with the basic kids mediums such as wax crayons, or plastic crayons, or colour pencils.
A kid does not know how to control his/her hand when holding the pencil. They might use it brutally with so much force that the pencil lead would break. Especially, when it comes to artist-level colour pencils such as Prismacolors. Prismacolor pencils are really soft. I am talking about the Prismacolor Premier Colour Pencils. I haven’t tried the other types of Prismacolor such as Verithin and Scholar. Premier pencils are really soft and high-pigmented, whereas Scholar pencils are hard-cored and low-pigmented. I don’t know if Scholar is meant for kids, but I would suggest that parents buy cheaper brands like Doms or Camlin for their kids’ first attempts. Kids usually give so much force onto the pencil tip and tend to break them, which isn’t nice. They can start with Prismacolours when they have finally gained control over their hands. Gaining control means, to be able to properly shade without uneven strokes, know the difference between light shading and dark shading, knowing when to apply more force on the pencil tip, etc. Usually what kids do is press the pencil so hard onto the paper that the tip breaks. Continuous breakage of costly pencils isn’t good, and it’d be a waste.
Normal pencils like Doms and Camlin are somewhat hard-cored and thus do not break as easily as Prismacolors. Hence, it is better to opt for such pencils rather than jumping directly to Prismacolors at a young age.
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