Author: foxboylucien

What’s your favorite brand of colored pencils and what’s a brand you recommend to aspiring artists with small budgets?

My favourite is Prismacolor, but they’re also the ones I’ve used the most so I haven’t really compared them to much.

When I was first starting out I used Crayola, and they worked. They got colour on the paper. But I didn’t even realize how much they were holding me back until I got a pack of Prismacolor Scholars on sale. Scholars are not the same as Prismacolor Premieres, but they had better colour selection than Crayola. They also worked, but again, I didn’t realize how much they were holding me back until I was gifted a pack of Prismacolor Premieres. I swear by these pencils. I have a few Derwent soft pencils, some Faber Castell, and some Artist’s Loft, but Prismacolor are my favourite. 

As for price, Scholars are much cheaper than Premieres. They are also designed for the developing artist (I found them very useful and they were my prized possession when I was 14). So maybe start out with the Scholars (I found mine at Target), then move on to the Premieres! If you wanted to just go right for the Premiers though, I downloaded the Michaels app and they always have a coupon you can use! I got my big pack of pencils 50% off and they ended up being cheaper than the smaller pack of pencils at regular price!

How did you get into art? Hi! 👋

hello! (sorry I wrote too much with this answer… I present to you my entire life story XD)

I started doing art more seriously in 2013/2014, just after the release of Frozen. My first couple pieces were of Elsa, a character I had come to love with all my heart and wanted to try creating from scratch to let some of my love out on the paper. I was only 13 at the time and the only art supplies I had were printer paper (which I still use for most of my pieces, haha) and crayola coloured pencils, so the quality was definitely not good. But I had a lot of fun! I went on to draw more of my favourite characters, and got really good at copying screenshots from animated movies with my pencils. I moved on to more realistic portraits with the release of Cinderella (2015), when I just could not stop drawing Lily James. After that I took a bit of a break from art until about a year ago, when I started doing portraits of book characters to help me imagine them and share that image with others.

I guess what got me into art was my extreme passion for movies and my need to put that passion to use. Now it’s my love for book characters that keeps me drawing!