Colored pencils Prisma VS Faber-Castell

[Nina]

[Nina]

I had a question for all the artist out there. I love prismacolors and that’s what I work with alot but I keep reading about Faber-Castell Polychromos Pencils I know they are oil based & not wax based like prismacolors but what eles makes them so great and cost more? anyone used them? like them pros/cons? I’m thinking about buying a set but they are alot!
Thanks everyone

[Jennifer]

Vantid will have the best answer for this- she’s the BEST colored pencil artist I know of! 😀

Volunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.com

[Akeyla]

I was to late as I already invested into a huge box of prismacolors. But I do own a few polychromos and know a few fantastic artists using them (bloodhoundomega).
IF you like to layer and have a thick and full effect then polychromos is by far the best I ever held. Better than Prismacolor. Polys are also pretty durable from what I heard. My Prismas shatter when I drop them, you know, that depressing sharpen and sharpen and sharpen… and the point always falls out.
However, if you do not fully work with colorpencils (I shade with aquarell first mostly) prismas but also Caran DAche are fully fine, and also Derwent (which I consider almost as good as Polys).
Especially as Polychromos are pretty expensive. For my taste I need a lot of color variations to cover my desire, meaning, I’d need the big box. The big box costs 130 euros or so on a very good day. Thats about 150-160$?
you could do what I do, I own the main colors as polychromos, and use the prismas for the rest 🙂
hope this helps

[Nina]

thanks that does help!

[NirvanaCat13]

I personaly like the Prismacolors, for the simple fact that I have better results with the deep coloration and detail work, I find that the Fabers tend to smear too much when I’m working on fine line detail. IMHO Although, the Prisma’s aren’t cheap either, I think about $1.75 a pencil? I know a tin of 132 will cost you $180

[Alyssa]

Aw ha, I found you Nirvana. You can run, but you can’t hide. hehe

Sorry don’t know anything about pencils except I used them in grade school.

[Nina]

Nirvanacat13 wrote:

I personaly like the Prismacolors, for the simple fact that I have better results with the deep coloration and detail work, I find that the Fabers tend to smear too much when I’m working on fine line detail. IMHO Although, the Prisma’s aren’t cheap either, I think about $1.75 a pencil? I know a tin of 132 will cost you $180

Thanks yea that’s what I keep reading that they smear alot. But the artwork I’ve seen with them looks really great & super bright. I already have a ton of prismas so I’m not worried about they cost of them. I ended up getting the light-fast prismacolors because my hobby loddy didn’t even have the other brand.

[TrottierJS]

I use them both in nearly all of my pieces along with some Pablos.. The majority though is Prismas because of their smooth and softer laying ability along with their color intensity. Prismas also have by far the best white I have run across as the others I have tried seem to be a bit translucent.

[NirvanaCat13]

TrottierJS wrote:

I use them both in nearly all of my pieces along with some Pablos.. The majority though is Prismas because of their smooth and softer laying ability along with their color intensity. Prismas also have by far the best white I have run across as the others I have tried seem to be a bit translucent.

Ya know, I never would have thought to discern that difference between the whites, but I’ve found that as well! Maybe it was an unconcious thing and I just steered twords Prismas for that reason…..Meh, as in the tootsie pop comercials…..The world may never know 😆

[Chessapeaka]

I like using Faber-Castell for a really silly reason: it amuses me that the color names are in German as well as English.

Otherwise, I’m not experienced enough with pencils to know much… but it seems to me that the Fabers are a bit, hm, harder? And they aren’t quite as pastel-like as Prismas when you’re coloring on paper that isn’t white. The end up a little more translucent than Prismacolors, I think. (The difference isn’t that great, though, otherwise I would be able to remember which pieces I did with which pencil, which I can’t…)

When it comes to watercolor pencils I’ve decided I like Derwent. Prismacolor is nice too, but they kept breaking! Then again, maybe I just got a crappy batch…

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