Looking for advice ON WHICH Coloured pencil RANGE TO BUY?

Help and advice is at hand if so....

I originally posted a Blog here on my News page with a link to the latest Article I had written in July 2015 but it appears I deleted it instead of another! Gaaah! So here it is again - a link to the Article which focuses on Coloured pencils and I decided to do a trial on different pencils that I currently have in my collection. 

Caran Dache Luminance pencils

Derwent's Coloursoft pencils

Faber Castell Polychromos CP's

Berol Karisma pencils - Discontinued

This article shows the 5 most important factors that I look for when selecting my professional pencil range:

• I need to have a range that allows multiple layering
• I need them to blend well for backgrounds and skin tones
• Will work well with fixative
• The pencils must be extremely lightfast and the colours strong
• Need soft and hard pencils for different areas of my work

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The 5 'tests' shown in this article includes:

1. Black & White Test
2. Hardness V's Softness
3. 10 layer test - 'Mixed' layering
4. Fixative test
5. Blendability

This article also gives information on the importance of paper weight (gsm), information on each pencil including costs (GBP) and lightfast ratings as well as my own thoughts on 'adapting to coloured pencils' . I hope that this will be of help to all Coloured pencil Artists out there from those starting out looking to buy their first range to those interested in how Coloured pencils compare.  The very popular Prismacolor Premier & Verithin ranges will also be added to this article too.

​Any questions, just ask!