While I was in the hospital I got into “adult coloring”. The phrase sounds like you’re adding color to vaguely illicit pictures, but I mainly like to color flowers and nature things.
I kind of got a reputation as “the one that colors all the time”. I even had one doctor that would insist on seeing my coloring for the week when he would take over for his associate. Even other patients would wander in to take a look at my coloring. This was slightly disconcerting as everyone on my floor at the time was on containment—meaning we were deemed either highly contagious or highly likely to catch anything from anybody (as in my case).
As it turned out, the gift shop at the hospital has a great selection of adult coloring books. They’re one of the few places that sells spiral bound books. It makes them easy to color and you can keep them like a sketch book. And they’re reasonably priced. Now that coloring for adults is a “thing” everybody wants to charge an arm and a leg for a coloring book.
I’ve decided that when I’m back able to do more computer work, I’m going to make my own coloring book and market it. I might sell it for two bucks, just to be contrary.
But as usual, I digress.
I’ve always had a thing for colored pencils. As I got into the world of graphics to support myself, I decided I liked Prismacolor pencils above all. I like that they lay down a nice, saturated color with their waxy cores. But over time, Prismas have become extremely expensive. And the quality is going down. You glance at them wrong and the core breaks making them impossible to sharpen unless you do some work on them. But at two bucks or more for a pencil, you shouldn’t have to work on it!
While I was in the hospital, some fellow colorers and artists weighed in on their favorite colored pencils. Several people recommended Prang. I found a set of 36 Prangs for under 20 bucks and snapped it up. Even if I didn’t like them for all coloring needs, they could be useful.
I got them in the mail today. I tried one and was thinking I wasn’t impressed. It didn’t color as smoothly. I decided to give it a better chance and chose another color. Even with my beloved Prismas, some colors are “scratchy” for lack of a better term. The second Prang was great! It wasn’t as saturated in color as the Prisma but it really did color nicely! They blend well, too.
After coloring for a little bit, I noticed that they were holding a point well, too. I like to color with a sharp point, and with Prismas that means a lot of sharpening and waste of expensive pencils. The Prangs keep their point for a decently long time. I haven’t actually tried sharpening one yet, but for now, I’m thinking I might switch, if only to save some money. I don’t think Prang is open stock which is a drawback. I use a lot of certain colors (red and green) and open stock pencils let me replace those. But I can live with it. I could buy a whole box of Prang for the price of a few single Prismas.
Do any of you guys color or use colored pencils a lot? What kind do you like?
Craftaceous Period 