The act of adding color to an illustration is nothing less than magical.

It breeds life and dimension into an image, and turns a simple concept into a dynamic finished piece.

There are a plethora of mediums that you can use to add color to your work—the world is truly your oyster in the art arena. However, if you haven’t played around with many mediums, the colored pencil is one of the easiest to pick up. It offers its user more control than some less predictable mediums (e.g. watercolors), and its semi-permanence allows room for mistakes.

Student and artist-grade colored pencils allow you to layer and blend the pigment to create beautiful art that speaks wonders. I’ve used Crayola, Faber Castell (student-grade purchased overseas), Artist Loft, Prismacolor Scholar, and Prismacolor Premier colored pencils. And it’s probably no surprise that the Premiers are my favorite by far.

When I finally caved a year into my art journey and purchased my first set of Prismacolor Premiers, I was beyond astonished. I dove in, ordering the 132 set from Amazon. And since the set was on sale for Black Friday, I paid just under CAD$40 for them—an incredible steal, who could resist?

The soft cores of this line is to die for. The colors blend beautifully and simply melt onto the page of any sketchbook. Since this was my first major purchase into my art journey, my Prismacolors are very dear to me.

If you’re not ready to splurge on Premiers, then give the Prismacolor Scholar line a chance. It’s a student-grade variation of the Premier artist line, and also work wonderfully. They’re typically around $20 on Amazon, but tend to go on sale quite often.

Note that Prismacolor Scholars are not marketed as soft-core colored pencils, but their level of creaminess is should render them as such. They’re not as soft as the Premiere line, but this actually makes them easier to work with—especially when you’re just starting out since it gives you more control over how much pigment you’d like to put down on the page. I also highly recommend these for anyone who’s just starting out.

Here are a few sketchbook pages from when I just purchased my Premiers:

The kick-ass Star Butterfly in her warrior outfit. She didn't come to play, she came to slay!

Fan art of Kyoko from Skip Beat in one of her roles.

What I envisioned as my very first D&D character.

Alya as the lovely Volpina. I forgot to draw in her mask. Also, you'll probably start to recognize that the Colored Pencil Era in my sketchbook also crossed over with the Fan Art Era.