Select colors of the Prismacolor Premier.

Prismacolor Premier colored pencils blend and burnish well.

If you want one set of colored pencils that will work for almost any project, go with Prismacolor Premier Color Pencils. They come in a set of 72 vivid colors with extremely soft wax cores that apply smoothly and can easily achieve full coverage. We especially love them for blending and burnishing. In testing, we found that layers of color almost melted together with very little effort. Because they are so soft, Prismacolor Premiers lose their points quickly and may leave crumbs on the paper. Their wax binders also make them vulnerable to wax bloom, a gradual oxidation process where wax rises to the surface of a drawing, leaving a pale film. However, this is possible with all wax-based pencils, and using fixative or dabbing gently with a cloth are simple fixes. Prismacolor Premiers are highly opaque and suitable for colored paper as well as other papers like coloring books and sketchbooks.

High-quality colored pencils are worth the investment for a simple reason: they allow you to appreciate the full range of what colored pencils can do. Colored pencils come in student, scholastic, and artist grade, which have increasingly high ratios of pigment to filler. If you’ve ever used colored pencils and found them frustrating and dull, you were probably using student-grade pencils. Artist-grade pencils are not only more vivid, but have improved blending, layering, and coverage. Better pencils make it easier to get an image from your mind to paper, and they’re just more fun to play with.

Fine art colored pencil drawings use many layers to develop realistic images with incredible depth, dimension, and lifelike colors. The best colored pencils for fine art are highly pigmented and come in a large range of hues.

Faber-Castell Polychromos

Seven colors of the Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils.

Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils are lightfast.

Faber-Castell Polychromos are the pencils to use if you’re drawing a piece for display. Their richly pigmented cores are oil based, which means that they’ll never suffer from wax bloom. More impressively, they are lightfast. Asterisks next to each color’s name indicate how lightfast that specific color is so that you can easily see how each pencil will perform over time. These artist-quality pencils lay down a smooth layer of color at the slightest touch, but their strong points can also handle heavy pressure for greater intensity. Use these pencils for firm, confident strokes. In addition, Polychromos pencils are color-matched with other Faber-Castell products. This lets you easily combine colored pencil with other media, such as markers and brush pens from the Faber-Castell PITT line. Polychromos pencils come in 120 individual colors as well as sets of 12, 24, and 36 to help you achieve precisely the right hue.

Polychromos pencils are often recommended by professional artists who cite their durability. Although Polychromos pencils are a bit more expensive than our top all-around colored pencil, you’ll get more than enough use out of each pencil to make up for it. If you’re planning to use your pencils all the way down to the end, pick Polychromos (and maybe pick up a pencil extender too)!

Also Consider: Uni Pericia

Uni Pericia colored pencils are vivid and luxuriously smooth.

Uni Pericia pencils are some of the most deliciously creamy pencils we’ve ever used. They feature a unique oil-based core that also incorporates a special wax for exceptionally smooth application. Their high-quality pigments yield vivid hues with each stroke. They blend well and are quite opaque, which makes them a good choice for colored paper also. They have good lightfastness. Uni Pericia colored pencils come in sets of 12, 24, and 36. They are packaged in gorgeous faux leather cases that make them especially attractive gifts.

Artists’ everyday carry gear often includes a simple sketching kit to allow them to draw during their downtime and capture fleeting moments on paper. They also often begin more finished pieces with loose sketches in light-colored pencil. Colored sketching pencils don’t need to come in as many shades as other colored pencils for artists, but those they do have should be versatile as well as hard enough to minimize smudging in a closed sketchbook.

Uni Vermilion and Prussian Blue Pencils

Uni Vermilion and Prussian Blue Pencils are double sided.

Vermillion is good for underdrawing, while Prussian blue adds emphasis.

These pencils are designed for editors, but they’re surprisingly good for sketching also. Uni Vermilion and Prussian Blue Pencils are double sided, so you can carry two colors without taking up any extra space. They have firm cores that don’t smudge very much but are soft enough to easily lay down smooth lines. The vermillion side is a slightly orange red that works well for underdrawing, while the darker Prussian blue side is ideal for overdrawing and adding emphasis. This pair of colors would also work well for capturing warm light and cool shadows, a combination often found when drawing in sunlight.

These two-sided pencils are available in hexagonal or round bodies to suit your preferences and either an even distribution of the two colors or a 7:3 ratio of vermillion to Prussian blue for those who use the red side more often. They also come in single-color erasable versions.

Also Consider: Caran d'Ache Sketcher Pencils

Caran d'Ache Sketcher Pencils are easy to edit out of pictures.

If you’re sketching an underdrawing for a drawing that you plan to work with digitally, Caran d'Ache Sketcher Pencils are the perfect choice. They come in a single light blue hue known as non-repro blue. This shade of blue is not picked up by black and white photocopiers and is easy to edit out of scanned images. They also take ink well without showing through. This allows artists to draw over their lines and complete multi-media projects without worrying about stray marks. They erase well. Their leads are hard enough to resist breakage and maintain a sharp point yet soft enough to draw smoothly and easily.

Toned paper, or paper colored in neutral hues, offers several advantages. It encourages artists to be as deliberate with their highlights as they are with their shadows, improving understanding of lighting. It can also give a drawing a unified look or set a certain mood. If you plan to use toned paper, look for pencils with high opacity. This will allow you to develop vivid images on darker surfaces.

Uni Arterase Color Pencils

Representative colors of the Uni Arterase.

Uni Arterase Color Pencils show up well on toned paper.

Our favorite colored pencils for toned paper are the Uni Arterase. They are highly opaque and stand out boldly from dark paper. They are also an absolute joy to use, with cores that are simultaneously firm and gloriously smooth. Their strong tips sharpen to precise points and readily produce different color values depending on the amount of pressure used. They blend together well. As a bonus, Uni Arterase colored pencils erase astonishingly well. If you use erasers to add highlights, remove initial sketches, or just tidy up mistakes, these are the pencils for you. They come in sets of 12 and 24 as well as singly and in a 36-color bundle.

Also Consider: Prismacolor Premier Color Pencils

Prismacolor Premier Color Pencils are highly opaque.

In addition to being our top overall pick, Prismacolor Premier pencils are an excellent choice for colored paper. Their pigmentation gives them excellent contrast, while their softness allows them to completely cover even the darkest paper.

Many people start coloring with whatever tools they have on hand, but ordinary colored pencils are inconsistent and poorly pigmented. Higher-quality colored pencils let you use layering and blending to fill the intricate patterns of adult coloring books with more beautiful and subtle hues. Their vivid colors can be a revelation - not to mention, their smoothness makes coloring even more relaxing. Read our guide to Adult Coloring Supplies for more recommendations.

Uni No.888 Color Pencils

Uni No.888 Color Pencils come in a variety of natural hues.

Uni No.888 Color Pencils can form beautiful gradients.

Uni designed their No.888 Color Pencils specifically for coloring books. They come in a set of 36 that includes several rich hues of red, brown, and green. This allows colorists to depict natural motifs like plants and animals with great detail and variety. They also layer well, so you can build up more colors than are represented in the set. Uni No.888 colored pencils are pleasantly soft and allow for smooth gradations between colors.

Also Consider: Blackwing Colors Colored Pencils

Blackwing Colors are wonderfully smooth.

In addition to their famous graphite pencils, Blackwing also produces vibrant colored pencils. Like the Uni No.888, Blackwing Colors are made specifically for adult coloring books. They have wonderfully smooth wax-based cores for easy coloring and work best on mildly textured paper. Their main drawback is their limited selection of 12 bright hues. If you’d like more different colors, try the Tombow Irojiten Color Pencils. These harder Japanese pencils come in unusual shades, including fluorescent and grayscale.

Water-soluble pencils combine the best features of painting and drawing. When dry, they have the precision and control of standard colored pencils. Once wet, their marks disperse like watercolor paint. Artists can even dip their pencil tips in water to produce extra-bold lines or use wet brushes to grab pigment to paint with. Typical drawing paper warps when wet, so it’s best to pair watercolor pencils with heavier paper. To learn more, check out our guide on how to use watercolor pencils.

Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer Watercolor Pencils

Select colors of Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer Watercolor Pencils.

Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer Watercolor Pencils draw with bright colors and allow fine detail.

Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer Watercolor Pencils come in 120 vivid colors. These pencils blend and layer well, and have slightly harder cores, so reach for these if you enjoy control when working at a smaller scale. Water makes these pencils even more vivid and almost completely washes away underlying pencil lines, creating a product similar to traditional watercolor. Draw in wet areas for bold, dark lines. Once dry, the watercolor washes become permanent. This allows artists to safely layer multiple colors and media over previously activated pencil marks.

Faber-Castell watercolor pencils are lightfast and treated to prevent lead breakage. They come individually and in sets of 6, 12, 24, 36, 60, and 120. Consider pairing them with a water brush for no-fuss painting.

Also Consider: Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle Pencils

Select colors of the Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle Pencils.

Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle Pencils are designed to produce museum-quality artwork. They have extra-thick cores of concentrated pigment that leaves brilliant marks at the slightest touch. They are extremely soft. This means that they may leave crumbs on your paper, but they will also provide excellent coverage and blend very well. When touched with water, their colors brighten even further and spread smoothly.

These Swiss watercolor pencils are lightfast to prevent your art from fading over time. Each pencil bears a series of asterisks to show where it falls on the Standard Blue Wool Scale so that you can choose colors that are as lightfast as you need. Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle Pencils come in 76 individual colors. Because they are slightly wider than most other pencils, they don’t fit in every sharpener. We have found that the Kum No. 410 Magnesium Pencil Sharpener works well.

If you’re used to drawing with graphite pencils, you might already be familiar with some of these techniques. Try all of these methods with light pressure first.

Back and Forth Stroke

Make one continuous stroke back and forth like a very quick zig-zag. This is the simplest method for covering an area.

Scumbling

Tiny overlapping loop-de-loops give a smooth, soft texture.

Hatching and Cross-Hatching

Hatch with parallel lines (straight or curving around your shape) or turn hatching into cross-hatching with another layer of lines on top.

Stippling

Cover an area with tiny dots. Pack them closely or space them out to control intensity of color. We think stippling with multiple hues looks cool.

Exercises to gain confidence and control

Practice gradients, flicks, waves and circles to get used to your new pencils.

How To Choose Colors

Warm and cool colors. Note that other colors can be warm or cool if they have undertones of red or blue.

Even when you’re drawing from life or a photo, picking colors doesn’t need to be painstaking. If you correctly place your values (levels of light and dark), you’re most of the way to a great drawing. The next consideration is color temperature. Warm colors are closer to red and yellow, while cool colors are closer to blue. Value and temperature together are almost all of the battle!

If you’re drawing with a limited range of colors, be sure it includes dark, light, warm and cool. Layering warm and cool pencils will give you a neutral hue. Neutrals are a necessary part of the balance of any composition—don’t neglect them.

Mixing complementary (opposite) colors creates a neutral hue, while analogous (nearby) colors stay bright.

Temperature is closely related to complementary colors, colors opposite to each other on a color wheel. Complementary colors will always lose vividness if you layer them, but you can choose to do so to create black and brown hues with more depth. To layer colors without creating a neutral hue, choose analogous colors, adjacent on the color wheel, which stay vivid.

“Analogous” and “complementary” are simplified terms. Here’s a quick glimpse of the science behind layering pencils:

• When white light shines onto a pigment, the pigment reflects colored light that hits your eye and absorbs all other colors of light. For example, the mark made by a green pencil reflects green light and absorbs all other wavelengths.
• White pigment reflects almost all light, while black pigment absorbs almost all light.
• When you layer non-opaque pigments, you add their absorptive properties together. When layering pigments that reflect similar wavelengths, your result is a vivid color. When layering pigments that would normally reflect very different wavelengths, that mixture absorbs a wider spectrum, reflecting less light, and you end up with a result that looks like black.

Shadows are always tinted the complementary color of the light that cast them. This isn’t an art rule, just a rule of the laws of physics. Here’s a tip for drawing in nature: yellow-orange sunlight casts cool blue shadows (but keep an eye out for any other light reflecting into those blue shadows, like warm light bouncing off the ground).

How to Layer Colored Pencils

The same gradual pressure change you use to make a gradient is perfect for blending. Layering over and over with gentle pressure gives depth of color.

Layering colored pencils is essential for a vibrant finished piece. We recommend beginning your drawing with lighter colors. It’s easier to add dark on top of light, and light colors are more forgiving for a starting sketch. Then, layer your colors with gentle pressure.

Use gentle pressure for more control over your results, and to preserve the tooth of the paper, which allows you to add more pigment later. When blending one color into another, gradually decrease your pressure to fade edges and blend smoothly. Frequently switch back and forth between the colors you're blending and layer lightly again and again to build color intensity and even coverage.

The opacity of your pencils’ cores will affect how your layers build. Less opaque pencils will end up with greater depth of color, as new layers show through more to the ones below.

Combining different brands and types of colored pencils can benefit a drawing. Hard pencils will be better for details, soft pencils will be better for coverage, and you might want to include a color only made by one brand. But don’t switch between hard and soft pencils accidentally—if you get used to one range of pressure, it won’t have the same effect with a different lead hardness.

How to Burnish Colored Pencils

An unburnished gradient (above).
Burnished with a colorless blender (below).

Burnished with the same pink used in the gradient (above).
Burnished with white (below).

As we mentioned earlier in this guide, burnishing is achieved simply by layering with heavy pressure until no paper shows through. It compresses the fibers of your paper, making it harder to add additional pigment, and the end product is shiny and smooth.

You can burnish a drawing with any colored pencil, but most will affect the hues of your careful blending and layering. The all-purpose option is a colorless blender pencil (not included in sets). A colorless blender saves overuse of your other pencils, creates the brightest burnished colors, smooths out gradients, and preserves complex mixes of color. You can also use white or a light tint, like cream, pale pink, or blue. If this washes out your drawing, you can layer your original colors on top in a two-step burnishing process.

• A still life of your favorite objects. Collect one or two of your most beloved possessions—it’s fun to draw things that you love.
• Observational sketches. Go outside and draw what you see! Sunlight provides a great opportunity to practice color temperature, and making quick drawings means you can quickly improve.
• An existing drawing or painting you’re fond of. Keep an eye out for dark, light, and color temperature. Search the Internet and find a challenge to undertake.

• Swatch: We shaded each swatch from soft to hard pressure to show the full range of shading available.
• Erasing: We erased the center of each swatch with a Sakura Foam Eraser.
• Smudging: We rubbed half swatches with a finger to see how much color would smudge.
• Opacity: We swatched white pencils on black paper to see how opaque the pencils were. If a line did not include white, we used the lightest available substitute.
• Crumbling: We made a partial swatch with hard pressure and photographed the crumbs left on the paper. Crumbs won’t affect your drawing if gently brushed away, but they do indicate a pencil will get used up more quickly and have a shorter lifespan.

• Swatch: We shaded each swatch from soft to hard pressure to show the full range of shading available.
• Water: We drew over the swatches with a water brush.
• Odorless Mineral Spirits (OMS): We drew over the swatches with odorless mineral spirits.
• Ink: We drew over the swatches with a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and Copic Multiliner SP Pen.