I also tried the pencils on Bristol Smooth paper, which incidentally was the paper I drew the Buzz Lightyear on, they worked very well on this smooth surface, I also tried them on Velum and Watercolor paper with very similar results on all papers. The downside with wax-based colored pencils is that they break more often because of their soft cores. The main drawback with these is that the quality will be lower than artist-grade pencils similar to other budget-friendly brands. But oil-based and wax-based pencils are not such polar opposites and can be used interchangeably without any issues. Luuk Minkman is a seasoned artist renowned for creating photorealistic art with colored pencils and markers.

They behave in exactly the same way as premium oil-based pencils so you can use blender pencils, burnishers, baby oil and other products to give you a more professional look but all of the images below have been completed with just the Marco pencils, without any other products. I also used a blending pencil as well as the Art-n-Fly white pencil, this too worked really well and with the white pencil not being very opaque, using this method did not reduce the colors too much. It has 72 colours in total and the pencils are smooth with a creamy texture, perfect for blending the oil based colours together. This set also comes with an attractive tin with removable lid for easy access to pencils without taking up space on your desk.In addition to their lightfastness, which ensures your artwork's longevity, the Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils offer an extensive color range of 120 shades. As with many coloured pencils, the end of the pencil is coloured but this isn’t always an accurate portrayal of the colour you’ll lay down and this often leads to some very strange colour combinations due to “accidents”. I have read that you can put your colored pencils in an oven on the lowest setting and bake an hour or two then let them cool to harden the wax to help prevent breaking.

I have Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils, Caran D’Ache Luminance sample, Caran D’Ache Pablo sample as well as Walnut Hollow oil pencils. Also, color application, while sparse on the first couple of passes, can easily be stacked which allows for much more technical and controlled color layering.

If your colored pencils break often when sharpening or using, you can end up having to replace them sooner. They’re more affordable compared to Faber-Castell’s Polychromos or Derwent’s Lightfast colored pencils which we’ll talk about a bit later.