Vanilla Beans: The Cult of Cheap

Feb 15

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I made it through both livestreams last week and another two this week.

And I’m feeling sooooooooo much better.

There aren’t enough o’s in that so to cover how much better I feel!

I’m doing some website work this next week so if things look a little strange or something’s out of place, give me a bit to get everything back in order.

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We started the colored pencil series with the Cash Cow theory.

And it’s only possible because artists ignore the hobby market, leaving you as prey for disreputable art supply manufacturers.

Then last week, I introduced you to the pigment zoo inside a box of high quality colored pencils.

This week, let’s look at the other end of the market.

THE CULT OF CHEAP

The pandemic changed a lot of things.

We were all cooped up, desperate for something to do.

Even though adult coloring was popular before the Great Shutdown— once we watched everything on Netflix twice, the only thing left to do was bake sourdough bread or color.

In 2020, the colored pencil market completely flip-flopped.

Before Covid, colorists were all up on their high-horses about Polychromos. They insisted that everyone needed top quality, lightfast, oil based colored pencils.

No matter what the price.

It wasn’t an option. If you wanted to be taken seriously, you used expensive pencils.

If you were not using The Best (TM) then you were the worst.

Covid brought a whole new group of people into Coloringworld, and like it or not, the newbies took over.

Now us old-timers are dealing with the Cult of Cheap.

So how did we go from “no colored pencil is too expensive” to the joys of a 20 cent pencil?

It’s all about The Man.

The Man locked you in your house.

The Man closed schools, churches, and businesses.

The Man shut down everything fun. Anything he didn’t close, he made impossible to enjoy.

Then the economy tanked.

Even if you were 100% behind the safety measures, it’s natural feel a little resentful with your life turned upside-down and inflation everywhere.

I don’t think the rise of Temu could’ve or would’ve happened without the pandemic lowering our standard of living.

There’s a lot of animosity right now. We all feel taken advantage of.

And somehow, the art supply companies who’ve been innocently chugging along as normal, doing what they’ve done for decades or even centuries… They’re still making high quality products. And in case you didn’t know, art supplies are not the most lucrative business. They constantly teeter on the edge of solvency.

But suddenly, they’re the bad guys?

They sell expensive pencils which you can’t afford, so they’re the enemy.

A pencil is just a pencil!!! Why pay more? There’s tons of people making the same pencils at a lower price!

The new heroes of the post-pandemic coloring world are overseas rando companies making inexpensive colored pencils.

All hail the Happi-Artzee colored pencil company. They truly care about me!

But wait a minute…

Are they the same pencils?

Is there really no difference between a 4 dollar Holbein and a 20 cent Kalour?

Does Kalour deserve a Nobel Prize, selling the same exact thing for 95% less?

Is the Cult of Cheap correct? Brand schmand?

Well, you tell me.

Remember last week?

We went digging for earthy pigments in a French cave.

We farmed herbs in India for yellow roots.

Mad scientists in a basement lab were cooking minerals.

Pigments are expensive because they’re hard to get.

We can’t just <poof> them into existence. Pigments must to be discovered, tested, cultured, or harvested.

And once you get ‘em, you gotta process ‘em into usable form.

This is Talc.

Talc is an extremely inexpensive mineral found everywhere except Antarctica.

It’s literally dirt cheap. It’s so cheap you can find Talc in 99 products in your bathroom right now.

Talc is the pigment in cheap colored pencils.

Not all of them. I wouldn’t want to over-generalize. Some colored pencils use Kaolin, Bentonite, or Feldspar which not coincidentally all look exactly like Talc.

Uhhh, wait a minute, Amy…

Something’s wrong. You just called Talc a “pigment”.

But Talc is WHITE!!! Did you maybe mean they make WHITE colored pencils with Talc?

Nope.

I meant what I said.

Companies like Kalour and Arteza and Castle and whatever new company just sprang up in the arm-pit of China last night…

They use white pigment to make colorfully colorful colored pencils.

I told you last week how every pencil in a box of artist grade gets it’s color from a different pigment. The blue pencil feels and works a little different than the yellow pencil because every pigment is unique.

Every box is a zoo.

But when you open a box of Temu specials, you’re looking at one pencil.

White pigment as far as the eye can see.

The reason your cheapie pencils are so darned cheap isn’t loving kindness and human compassion.

The reason they can crank out pencils for next to nothing is because they only make ONE PENCIL.

The dirty little secret of cheap colored pencils— the thing you only see if you travel to dank factories in the third world where forced labor is totally legit…

Is that they’re making white pencils and dying them to suit your fancy.

Dye a white core with Red Dye #243 and you get a red pencil.

Dye the same darned white core with Blue Dye #56902 and you get a blue pencil.

Make a batch with Green #69023. Make a batch with Purple #847.

Need I go on?

One more time for the people who skim the newsletter:

Cheap colored pencils are colored with dye.

In related news, the hot new search term in the hobby pencil world is “White Label”.

I’m hearing it mentioned in lots of coloring videos too.

See, a bunch of colorists noticed their box of ArtzyCheep pencils looked a heck of a lot like their box of CheepyArtz pencils.

Same colors, same shape, same tray, same box… the only difference is the label. So now disappointed colorists are making White Label lists.

White Labelling means a factory makes generic pencils and will slap your name on ‘em for a price. I can have Amydoodle pencils on Amazon next month with a couple calls and a big check.

Colorists are sick of accidentally buying the same set two, three, or fifteen times under different brand names.

And I laughed when I heard “White Label” for the first time.

I love the irony.

Because White Label pencils start life as white pencils.

I’m not kidding when I called it the Cult of Cheap.

YouTube is still filtering abusive comments on my videos where I challenged the quality of Ohuhu products.

I’ll probably get a bunch of unsubscribes on today’s newsletter too. People get squirrelly when you question their favorite stuff.

But hey, I’m gonna say it anyway:

There’s something rotten in the cheap art supply market.

What you’re buying isn’t what they’re selling.

Let me leave you today with a vivid mental picture:

Imagine a factory in the poorest part of China running long shifts in conditions you would never, never tolerate yourself.