Derwent handles nicely, has a good range. 

My go-to is Faber-Castell Polychromos. There are a few pigments that Prismacolor has that I love and I've not found comparably in other brands (their beautiful clear magenta, Process Red, for example), so I put up with them, but I agree, the quality has declined. (The yellows are the worst for some reason.) I've read that you can put the Prismacolors in the oven to soften and reattach the leads but I've never tried it. Has anyone done that?

I did some comparisons (just half a dozen or so, not a full range) with the Caran D'Ache pencils and am not persuaded the pencils really warrant the extra cost (esp. when I'm pretty happy with my Polychromos) but I'd love to hear from other people because they do handle pretty nicely.

Kathy 


On Feb 17, 2015, at 5:31 PM, Liz Lockett wrote:

I've been using Derwent for a long time

On Feb 17, 2015 5:53 PM, "Maia Sanders" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I recently restocked my prismacolors to prepare for a series of CP illustrations, and in refreshing my color pencil skills I notice a significant reduction in quality, with many breakages, lead slipping from the casing, wood splintering when sharpening, etc- the only thing that hasn't changed for the worse is the working quality of the pencil. 

Researching for five minutes leads me to believe the quality has gone to the dogs ( no offense to dogs of quality!) since the product was sold and manufacturing moved to Mexico.

Question is: what are people using for colored pencil these days? Are they just putting up with prismacolor or is there some better alternative? I know prismacolor are fairly inexpensive and able to restock easily. But the good price goes away when you have to sharpen a new pencil to 3" long to get a point on it. 

Thanks all,

Maia


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