This is part of a small series displaying the look and uses of different dry (and sometimes mixed or wet!) media, featuring my little model, Blossom the Weedle. The linearts were done with a Sharpie PRO marker, which is a pretty great version of the Sharpie that is resistant to liquid--which is why it's used here.

This particular paper is one of my favorite brands, Bee Paper--this is the Mixed Media paper from this brand. As such, it has a slight tooth to it (texture)--which is to make it versatile to most dry and even a few wet mediums. On this particular paper, I have used several different brands of colored pencils--I have MANY, MANY different brands of colored pencils, but it would take me multiple pages to show them all off.........some of the ones I have and are NOT displayed here are the standard Crayola colored pencils that everyone's probably used, Derwent colored pencils, Faber-Castell colored pencils and RoseArt colored pencils. You can ask me questions of those, too--even though I don't have examples--I can compare them to examples here. :)

So, the thing in particular I want you to take a look at on this page are the two diagonal pictures that I have an arrow pointing between them. Why? Because I want to point out how these are BOTH Prismacolor brand colored pencils, but they are very different in the end. While all four pictures use the same chosen base colors (canary yellow, burnt sienna and carnation pink)--you can see how different these colors are across different brands. The difference between the two Prismacolor types is this: Premier type is the higher end, soft-core pencils that cost a lot more money than most people are willing to spend.........Scholar is the lower end, harder core, pencils that cost about half the price of the Premier type. The exact same named colors were used in both of these examples, but you can clearly see a color difference between the two--even though they both come from Prismacolor. I also added a visual of one side not using a blender pencil, while the other shows a use of a blender pencil to "smooth" it out. That kind of subtlety shows up better in the physical work than a picture or scan. :)

On the top right is shown a Koh-i-Noor pencil--these are a high-end pencil, but are much harder to find in stock in places like Hobby Lobby or Michael's. They're really pricey, but.........they have the BEST neon colors outside of a Crayola colored pencil and are incredibly smooth application on all papers without needing to press hard or use a blender pencil.

And speaking of Crayola--besides their standard brand, which is generally given to Children........they have begun to create a higher-end of art supplies. They're a little more expensive, they are of a nicer quality and they have the bold look that Crayola colors are known for in their colored pencils and crayons. This brand is called "Signature"--they have markers, colored pencils, watercolor cremes and watercolor markers under this brand........as well as some specialty markers (metallic, etc.). I have found Crayola Signature supplies easily at major chain stores like Target and Wal-Mart, so they are easily accessible and make a pretty good jumping off point if you're between using standard brand supplies and want to move to a higher-end quality of supplies. They're also inbetween the pricing on normal supplies and higher-end.