Colored Pencils are Hot!

A few years ago, every crafter had to own alcohol markers. Then watercolor took center stage. Now it’s colored pencils.

There’s a ton of chatter about colored pencil on the internet right now.

And a lot of it is flat-out wrong.

Many crafters say Prismacolor colored pencils or other wax-based pencils are inferior to oil-based brands. This is absolutely not true! Professional illustrator Amy Shulke speaks out about why she recommends Prismacolor for beginners and crafters, plus why she still uses them in her art today.

It's fashionable to bash Prismacolor pencils online

And as an art instructor who teaches with Prismacolor Premier Soft Core pencils, Prismacolor bashing makes my life a lot harder.

I’m getting more student questions like this:

You have Prismacolors on the class supply list but I’ve heard they’re not very good. What other brand would you recommend?

Well, that’s a problem. 

I gave you a supply list with Prismacolor Soft Core pencils on it, which means I'm recommending them as the best brand of colored pencils for my class. 

You like the look of my work, right? I’m telling you which colored pencils I used.

The whole point of the class is to show you how to get great results with the class supply list, correct?

But because someone trash-talked Prismas online, now I have to defend my teaching methods?

How do I respond politely to this?

Look, I’m going to be blunt in this article because the misinformation is out of control.

Someone needs to set the record straight.

Prismacolors are not crap!

Blunt enough for you?

I don’t care what KraftyKassie95 said on the Scrap-Happy Facebook page.

You don’t know her. You haven’t seen the quality of her work. She’s a semi-anonymous voice on the internet.

You’re about to make a large purchase based upon a few sentences in the comment section?

I’ve used Prismacolors since 1985

90% of the classes that I’ve taught for the last decade use Prismacolors too.

Prismascolor Soft Cores are an excellent choice for anyone learning to work with colored pencils

I recommend them for beginners.

They’re also a great forever-pencil for card makers and hobby colorers.

I wouldn’t ask my students to purchase Prismacolors if they were terrible pencils.

I teach anywhere from 4 to 12 classes per month using Prismacolor Premier Soft Core pencils because I sincerely think they’re the best option for my students.

So who are you going to believe—someone who is patiently teaching students to use these pencils or rando KraftyKassie95 who seems oddly invested in which pencils you use?

Quality versus Price

When you begin a new medium, there is always a great debate:

Do I go cheap and get lots of colors or should I go with fewer pencils of greater quality?

I never-never-never recommend buying student grade anything.

Inexpensive ingredients make learning difficult.

It’s simply harder to get good results from a student grade product. As a beginner, the last thing you need to do is make things more challenging.

So this leaves you looking at artist grade products. Unfortunately, artist grade colored pencils can be cost prohibitive.

That is less true for Prismacolor Premier Soft Core pencils.

Prismacolors are a little cheaper than some of the other artist grade brands. Prismas come in several sized sets that are all a well-balanced selection of colors. Prismacolors are also easy to find open-stock on art and craft store shelves. This makes them an excellent option for first timers!

Prismas absolutely are an artist grade product, no matter what KraftyKassie95 says. Of all the artist grade brands, they provide the most bang for your buck.

Do I think everyone should work with Prismas forever? No.

Do I think they’re the best investment a beginner can make? You bet’cha!

So why are people bashing Prismacolor?

Well, I’ll be honest with you: Prismacolor made some stupid decisions.

Just before pencils started trending, Prismacolor cut corners, lowered quality standards, and skimped on shipping procedures.

Dear Prismacolor,

If your name is mud, it’s your own darned fault.

Today, Prismacolor’s dumb decision to cut costs is further enhanced by an internet perception problem.

KraftyKassie95's half-baked opinion can be read and parroted by thousands of people. The internet equalizes voices so you can’t tell if the commenter is an an experienced professional artist or a once-a-month novice.

I’ve been loyal to Prismacolor since high school

That was thirty-umph years ago.

I’ve seen both subtle and major changes to the Prismacolor product line over the years. 

And because I’m brutally honest, I’ll give you the straight scoop on what I’ve observed- in personal use and in my classes.

The sad fact: Prismacolor Premier Soft Core pencils are not as nice today as they were a decade ago.

But let me be clear, the pigmented core (the lead) still feels like the same buttery smooth formula.

I don’t detect any major difference between the feel of my current pencil cores and the feeling from my random collection of Berol and Eagle vintage Prismacolors. So if Prismacolor has changed the core ingredients, the differences are subtle and unlikely to cause user problems.

The major Prismacolor complaints:

Please note: For all the complaining going on, you’d think I would be greatly affected by numerous quality issues.

I go through at least 60 pencils a year; I use them daily and I see a heck of a lot of students using them every month.

I simply have not encountered problems at the scale the internet suggests.

Let me repeat that- if anyone is going to see massive Prismacolor problems, I’m a great candidate. I use a lot of pencils myself and I watch a lot of local students use them each month.

Despite what the internet implies, I am NOT seeing a gigantic number of pencil failures. 

In fact, problems are pretty rare and they're isolated when they do pop up.

1. Wood casings can splinter

Splinters and shards are from a defect in the wood used to make the casing. Small chunks of wood can splinter off when sharpening the pencil with a harsh or dull electric rotary blade.

Yes, Prismacolor is using a noticeably lower grade cedar than they used to.

The wood simply feels softer to the touch. So I’ll buy the theory that softer wood + less inspection at the lumberyard leads to more splintering.

In the last five years, I’ve had only one pencil splinter.

After I sharpened past the missing notch, the pencil looked and performed as any other pencil would. 

I can’t recall any students losing shards in class and we sharpen our pencils a lot. A LOT.

If you have a pencil that splinters, don’t use an electric pencil sharpener until you get past the missing chunk of wood. A hand model that uses a sharp blade rather than rotary grinders will be more gentle.

It’s an easy fix. There's no need to go ballistic on an internet chat board about it.

2. Off-center cores

Yep, this is a genuine factory defect.

At some point, Prismacolor started allowing more off-centers to leave the factory. Once upon a time, the off-centers would have gone into a reject pile.

If your core is off-center you may have sharpening problems.

You think you're sharpening as normal but when you pull the pencil out of the sharpener,  there is wood at the point instead of colorful core. 

If the core is just a little off center, you will never notice. The core has to be waaaaaayyyy off center to be a serious problem.

Look, this is a simple fix. Don’t buy a pencil that has a wickedly off-center core! 

Look at the pencil ends before you buy. It takes about two seconds to spot which ones are wonky. No one is forcing you to buy wonky pencils.

If it came in a set, return the pencil by calling the Prismacolor consumer hotline.

Update 2019: I used to give the hotline phone number here but it’s easier to link you to their contact page. I recommend calling one of these phone numbers IN ADDITION to leaving an email. It’s all too easy to ignore an email, so double up with a phone call too.

3. Wood splits or loose cores

Pencils are made like a sandwich.

There’s a bottom half of wood with a channel down the length. A color core is placed into the channel and then the second wood layer goes on top. Glue holds the wood halves together. The glue also keeps the core from sliding out as you color.

If the glue fails, your pencil falls apart.

I can't recall having a pencil split.

I had one core dislodge while filming a class a few years ago. The pencil was about 3 inches long when it happened, so I’d gotten a ton of use out of it before it failed. I put a dab of crazy glue on the top end and continued working.

No big loss. I won’t head up to a bell tower to express my anguish over a loose core.

4. Shattered cores

When you shop for apples, you pick the prettiest and drop them into a plastic bag, right?

That’s not how you shop for eggs though... or do you toss them in a bag too?

All colored pencils are fragile.

You should not manhandle any brand of colored pencil.

And psssttt... if your pencil has "Soft Core" right in the name, maybe they’re telling you to treat it with care?

Seriously folks, I do not understand this complaint.

Do you want Prismacolor to make a firmer core that's less likely to break? They do. It’s called a Verithin. Go buy that and leave my precious soft cores alone! 

I want the soft buttery pencil lead and I’m willing to deal with occasional breakage to get it. It’s worth it.

Perhaps Prismacolor changed the way they load and ship cargo palettes. Poor shipping practices could be contributing to the breakage problem. You can’t bounce a crate of soft pencils around and expect them all to survive.

However, I’ve got two more guilty parties we need to look at…

How about the store that allows customers to fondle the pencils?

Many Prismacolor displays are totally open to grabby hands with no staff supervision.

If you are buying Prismas from a store like that, you deserve a broken pencil. I'm looking at you right now, all you 40% off Michael Ann's Lobby shoppers.

Next, let's look at the users who store their pencils rattling around loose in a shoebox.

And how about the people who let their pencils roll off the desk?

These people are asking for breakage! 

You have fragile pencils. You are not taking care of them. How is this Prismacolor’s fault?

Now I know, there are methods on the internet which claim that heating the pencil can heal the core. I’ve seen people mention the microwave, a heating pad, a low oven, and even setting them out in the sun. But here’s the deal, I don’t know if any of these methods work because I’ve never had to try them. I haven’t had a pencil with multiple internal breaks in recent memory.

You can’t buy Prismacolor pencils from CraftyMart and toss them loose into a desk drawer.

And if you do, don’t whine about breakage on the internet.

5. Prismacolors don’t erase well

Go away. Just go away.

They’re not supposed to erase easily. If you want an erasable pencil, shop for one.

6. Wax-based pencils are bad

If you get that white wax coating called "bloom", well... there's no nice way to say this:

You’re doing it wrong.

Bloom happens when you put down too many layers of heavy pencil, when you burnish like a mad banshee, or when you fail to seal your finished project.

If you must burnish... I do not, but that's a discussion for another day... but if you are a burnisher, then a simple spray coat of fixative or sealant will prevent blooming.

And don't use hairspray! Hairspray is not, not, not fixative.

Here's the kicker, something most people never think about when they do it- when you use a blending pencil, you are actively encouraging bloom. You don’t get to complain about wax bloom when you coat everything with extra wax! But again, fixative solves the problem.

If your project does bloom, a light rubbing with a facial tissue or microfiber cloth will remove the bloom buildup. Then spray it with fixative.

Fixative prevents blooming.

Getting the idea that fixative is important? I hope so.

And by the way, the oil based pencil which folks keep recommending online as “super-duper awesome because it's not wax based”? 

Uhmmmm, it has wax in it. All colored pencils contain wax. They just don’t mention it on the box.

7. “They’re the worst pencils, ever!”

This is the biggest Prisma complaint on the internet- it’s completely unspecific with hints of inevitable doom.

Prismacolor did a dumb thing- they took the name “Prismacolor” which once stood for something awesome and added it to of all the other pencils they crank out.

So Verithins became “Prismacolor Verithins”.

Col-Erase became Prismacolor Col-Erase.

Scholars are now Prismacolor Scholars.

Then they started overusing the word Premier. So now the word premier is associated with their lesser brands too.

My students are getting confused, something that never happened a decade ago.

The name thing is a serious problem.

I call for the Soft Core pencils but they’re labeled “Primacolor Premier” and ten years ago, they simply went by “Prismacolor”. A lot of my students are accidentally buying the wrong product, no matter how specific I make my lists.

I had one online student using Verithins for a year and she never understood why I kept calling my pencils buttery because hers were hard and brittle. Once she got her hands on a real Soft Core, months of my classes suddenly made sense.

And I have students who were enticed by the eraser on the ends of the Col-Erase pencils. Erasers have a special appeal to beginners.

It seems I always have a few students who learn they’ve got the wrong Prismacolor but refuse to upgrade until they've recouped their original investment.

So please, before you accept an internet opinion about terrible, horrible, Black Plague inducing Prismacolor pencils… find out which Prismas they're referring to.

They could be talking about Scholars. If that's the case, then KraftyKassie95 is completely right. Scholars are terrible!

Let me put it simply:

Yes, Prismacolor has some quality control issues but I honestly have not experienced enough of them to get my britches in a bunch.

Either I'm living in Shangra-la or the internet has exaggerated the problem.

And I'm near Detroit. This ain't Shangra-la.

I totally understand why professionals have switched from Prismas to other brands- I did too. But I was incorporating more lightfast pencils to my freelance projects long before the Prisma problems popped up.

Despite the internet scuttlebutt, I do not think that students need to buy ultra premium pencils immediately.

In fact...

It is unwise for beginners to purchase super-premium pencils at the start.

No colored pencil artist uses every pencil in the set. All artists have a core group of about 20 to 40 frequently used colors. And every one of us has pencils that we’ve used only once (to make a color swatch).

For a beginner to invest in a full set of the most expensive pencils? It's a waste of money.

You don’t yet know what your most used colors are going to be. 

Additionally, as a beginner, you simply don’t know enough about colored pencils to make a smart purchase. You don’t know if you’re going to do lots of landscapes or maybe specialize in florals, wildlife, or portraits. You don’t know what project size you prefer to work at. You don't know if you'll be a fine detail person or work in loose strokes.

There is not one brand of colored pencil that works for every genre and every technique at every scale.

Wait to make your large box, premium purchase until you know what you're doing. Wait until you're sure that you're going to stick with colored pencils long enough to justify the investment!

This is why I recommend and why I teach with Prismacolor Premier Soft Core pencils. 

They are an entry level, artist grade pencil which facilitates learning while allowing you to explore different genres and scales. They are chameleon pencils and they’re financially accessible.

This is why I disagree with KraftyKassie95 from Facebook

This is why I recommend Prismacolor Premier Soft Core pencils to my beginner and hobby level students.

Internet experts be damned.