Prismacolor, Faber Castell and Caran d'Ache.
These have been my favorite colored pencils out of the many I've tried on this
channel, and I keep coming back to them time and time again.
But if I had to choose just one... I don't know!
So today I'm pulling them all out to color a page from Johanna Basford's, Worlds
of Wonder and see if I can choose an ultimate favorite colored pencil.
This is the first page I've colored
from this beautiful book by Johanna Basford,
because I just couldn't resist to color these delicious looking treats.
I've chosen a bright color palette
from the color catalog that really gives the whimsical vibe that I'm going for,
and I've used this to grab some colors from each of my favorite pencil sets.
If you've watched more than a few
of my past videos, you won't be surprised to see the Prismacolor Premier colored
pencils among this list of my favorites today.
These are my go to pencil for so many of my projects, especially coloring pages.
And I use them more than any other brand in my videos.
But are they my absolute favorite?
That's what we're here to find out. Because alongside the Prismacolor today,
I've got the best of the best in colored pencils, the Caran d'Ache Luminance,
the Caran d'Ache, Pablo and the Faber Castell Polychromos.
These brands for me are my ultimate favorites
and while I know there are other
comparable brands available, I just can't help but come back to these.
I've chosen far more colors than I need for a page like this,
so I can switch between brands, compare them side by side,
and get a feel for how they compare when I'm using them all at once.
And by the end of this video, I will choose one brand.
I will choose my ultimate favorite.
I really hope I can make that choice,
or this is going to be a huge anti climax, so you should probably
subscribe now while - the excitement is high.
So these are some of the most expensive
pencils available, with Prismacolor usually being
the cheapest of these, and we'll talk more about why a little later.
But first, let's look at what these pencils have in common.
First,
these pencils all produce vivid, beautiful colors that lay down easily.
You get a lot of pigment with little
effort, so you don't get a sore hand, and the end results are beautiful.
They each have a huge range of colors, and you can buy each of them in big sets,
small sets, or as individual pencils to replace your most used colors.
They can all produce amazing results,
and owning any one of these sets is more than enough to create amazing art.
The biggest difference comes in the way
that these pencils feel, and this is not a sign of which is better
or worse, but this makes some of them more suitable for different types of art or
makes them more appealing to different artists.
It's also what makes this comparison so hard.
The Prismacolors have a buttery, waxy soft core that makes them wonderful
for blending, but not so good for fine details.
The soft core doesn't hold a sharp point
for long and is very fragile, but the buttery blending is something
that many other brands have tried to replicate, and this is what makes
the Prismacolor a favorite pencil among so many artists.
The Faber Castell Polychromos are an oil
based pencil and have a firm but smooth lead, which has quite the opposite feel.
Instead of buttery, it feels dry.
It holds a sharp point still lays down color incredibly well,
but the colors can't be mushed and blended in the same way as a Prismacolor pencil.
Instead, they need to be layered. With proper technique
these pencils can produce some amazing art and are an absolute joy to work with.
The Caran d'Ache pencils.
Both the Luminance and the Pablo pencils
are a bit of a hybrid blend between the Prismacolor and the Polychromos.
If there were such a thing.
I think guilty of assuming that Pablo pencils were oil based in the past,
but have confirmed that both the Caran d'Ache Pablo and the Luminance are wax based.
They are not as buttery smooth as
the Prismacolors, but they are great at blending,
and the core is much stronger. Because they are slightly drier and firmer,
they are also better at fine details.
The Pablo are firmer again than the Luminance, making them a little bit
more like the Polychromos, but as a wax pencil.
So other than this,
both the Luminance and the Pablo are similar in their quality and performance.
As I'm continuing to color, I'm definitely finding that Pablo
and the Polychromos are the easiest of these pencils to use
for the fine details.
These both hold a sharp point the best from our four pencil sets,
but when it comes to blending and the bigger areas of color,
I'm personally finding the Prismacolor and the Luminance are more enjoyable to use.
The Polychromos are the hardest to blend
out of these four pencils, and it's why many people who fall in love
with Prismacolors find them difficult to use in comparison.
But these pencils are some of the best artist grade pencils in the world.
Because they are oil based,
they work better with a layering technique, not with the same blending
technique that many people use for Prismacolor.
I used them for my 100,000 subscriber artwork and was really impressed with the result
and the vibrant colors. Which, by the way, I will be turning into a print soon.
And if you're doing hair or fur like pet portraits, Yes, Mosko, I'm looking at you,
this will allow much more detail than your softer pencils.
I'm coloring cake and I can smell cake,
For real, I can smell cake.
So it turns out, Shane is baking a cake
for our youngest son's birthday in the other room.
Perfectly on topic for today's video,
but also a little distracting because it smells amazing.
By the way, if you're watching this video
and just wishing I would stop talking so you can watch me color a little more
slowly, I have a whole new channel for that.
You can now watch many of my drawing
and coloring videos over one or 2 hours without any commentary.
But since you're here, let's keep talking about these pencils.
Specifically, let's talk about why three
of these brands are priced so much higher than the other in most shops.
While many artists, myself included, love the Prismacolor pencils, when it comes
to artist level quality, they don't quite match up to these other brands.
First, let's compare the quality of the pencil casings.
Prismacolor have a soft core, so it's essential that they are well protected.
And yet the casing of these have been
known to split and are not the consistent quality like these other brands.
Many of the cores are off center, and this increases the risk of damage
to the core when sharpening and using these pencils.
In comparison, the quality control on the Luminance,
the Pablo, and the Polychromos pencils are amazing.
The pencils are all perfectly centered,
and it's unlikely you'll find cracking or split barrels in a set.
Then there's the color of the barrels.
The process of matching the color
of the barrels to the color of the actual pencil is one that I wish more brands
would take the time to do well, and these higher end brands have done this.
You can grab a pencil and be confident of the expected color.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same for Prismacolor.
Most colors are a good match, but a few are quite different
to the actual pencil color, so you'll need to rely on swatches if you
want to choose exactly the right color pencil when you're coloring.
And then there's lightfastness.
Now, this is something that doesn't matter
to the average user, but it does matter if you are selling your art professionally.
Lightfastness measures how well
the pencil pigment holds its color and doesn't fade over time.
The colors that usually fade the most
in any brand are pinks, purples, reds, and blues.
This is probably because
of the ingredients used to make these particular pigments.
Because it's so important in professional
art, brands spend a lot of money to do proper lightfast testing,
although to be confusing, every brand seems to use a different system!
The most common lightfast standards
of pencils are the ASTM standard or the Blue Wool Rating.
Faber Castell uses a three star system to simplify the Blue Wool Testing results
they've done. 102 out of 120
Polychromos colors have the highest three
star rating, which ranks a seven to eight on the Blue Wool scale.
From the remaining pencils,
16 have a very good fade resistance of 25 years, and just two have a lower rating
and probably aren't the best for commissioned art.
The Caran d'Ache Pablo also use a three star
system, but for these pencils, three stars means 100 plus years,
two stars means 50 plus years, and one star means 15 to 50 years.
So even though they seem to be rated lower, they aren't too different
to the Polychromos, although again, I'd avoid the one star colors
if you're wanting to use lightflast colors only. The Prismacolor pencils often get
a bad name in this category, but out of the 150 pencils,
85 are actually considered lightfast under the ASTM rating.
The problem is the 26 pencils that have
the lowest lightfast rating, and with no stars on the actual pencils,
you'll have to find this information online, but if you want to use these
professionally, you could separate your set and create a selection of lightfast
Prismacolors to work from excluding the poor and even fair rated pencils.
The winner in Lightfastness definitely goes to the Caran d'Ache Luminance.
All of the pencils in their range have a rating of one or two in the ASTM system,
which makes them highly lightfast, and reliable to stand the test of time.
It's worth mentioning that Derwent also
have a similar range of Lightfast pencils, and while I haven't personally
tried them enough to include them in my favorites, they are very comparable
to the Caran d'Ache Luminance in performance and in Lightfastness ratings.
In fact, I really should give them another try because I'd probably love them.
With all that technical talk out
of the way, it's important not to completely discredit
Prismacolor when comparing it against these other high end brands.
After all, Prismacolor is generally far
more affordable and is still my go to pencil for so many of my coloring books.
It's the brand I recommend to friends
who want to get into adult coloring, and it just feels good to use.
But after today's side by side experience, I think I finally need to admit
that Prismacolor isn't actually my favorite pencil.
As I came to the background of this coloring page, I really didn't know how I
wanted to approach this, so I actually took a photo,
put it in Photoshop, and tried some different backgrounds
digitally, as a little test run before coloring my actual page.
And I'm quite happy with how this is turning out.
But I'm running out of time to make
my decision, and through this whole process I keep asking myself,
how do I feel when I pick up each different pencil?
Do I feel better or worse? Excited or disappointed?
And although all of these pencils are
amazing, I think I finally decided on my ultimate favorite.
I'm adding some final touches with a white
paint pen, and I love how this just finishes off the page.
I tried to stick to the limited color palette as much as possible,
even with the huge selection of pencils from each brand, and honestly,
I didn't know what was coming next at most points during this coloring page,
I just kept coloring the next thing that made sense until it all came together.
So this end result is as much of a wonderful surprise for me as it is
for you watching and I know I will continue to use all of these brands.
I love using them together, more than anything, to take the strengths from each
one and make up for the weaknesses in the other.
Mixing brands will expand your color range
as well because every set has a slightly different range of colors.
Although more often than not I tend
to just mix the colors I want if they aren't included in the set I'm using.
And if you want to see the Polychromos really pushed to their limits,
you should definitely watch my 100,000 drawing challenge after this,
but my favorite, and you're probably not surprised, the Caran d'Ache Luminance