I’ve been an artist for a long time. I sold my first portrait at age 17, which means I’ve been at this business for nearly 50 years (does that boggle your mind like it does mine?). I’ve used a lot of pencils since switching from oils, but Prismacolor was my go-to pencil at the beginning and for many years.
My History with Prismacolor Pencils
I started using Prismacolors back in the 1980s, when they were Berol Prismacolor. No better pencil was so widely available (in the US at least) at reasonable prices. They were a high-quality pencil and problems like breaking leads, split casings, and off-center pigment cores were unheard of.
At least I never heard of them.
I had no problems with the pencils. They were perfect for the work I was doing, which was almost exclusively horse portraits. When I switched from mat board to Stonehenge paper, Prismacolor worked even better.
Changes in the Brand
Eventually, Berol sold the Prismacolor brand to Sanford, which subsequently sold the brand to Newell-Rubbermaid. Manufacturing changed location and artists began having problems shortly afterward.
I used Prismacolor throughout all those changes, and to be honest, I had very few problems. One batch of Indigo Blue pencils were so gritty I couldn’t use them. Some pencils did break during sharpening or drawing, and there were a few that broke so much, they were useless. But that’s all I recall.
I did discover (or maybe started noticing is a better way to say it) that quite a few pencils had off-center pigment cores, and I learned still later that sharpening problems often resulted from off-center cores.
More recently, I began finding warped pencils. Fortunately, I usually bought open stock from a local suppler, and learned how to check for warped pencils, so that problem was solved.
But overall, I had relatively few problems with Prismacolor pencils.
Then came the spring of 2017.
The Case of the Fugitive Pencils
Early in 2017, I started hearing a word that aroused concern. Lightfastness. Specifically, the poor lightfast ratings of many Prismacolor colors.
I believe I mentioned that I was using colored pencils almost exclusively for portraits, right? People were paying good money for those portraits.
I’d also started doing landscapes, which I hoped to sell.
So it was discouraging to discover some of my favorite blues and greens, as well as a number of other colors, were fugitive. They faded over time, even in the best conditions.
How permanent were all those portraits I’d created? Would I start hearing from clients about disappearing portraits? It still gives me a twinge of concern thinking those thoughts!
Two Solutions
I went through my pencils, and sorted out all the fugitive colors. The pile of safe colors was almost the same size as the pile of fugitive colors, but I confess I erred on the side of caution. I threw out everything rated III, IV, or V. The lightfast colors are in one box, and the non-lightfast colors in another box, so I won’t accidentally use a fading color on an important art piece.
I still use the other colors and I still love the way they go onto paper and the effects I can get. But I miss colors like Sky Blue Light, Light Cerulean Blue, and Limepeel.
Even so, I refuse to use them for anything except sketching and filling in my monthly habit tracker.
The other thing I did was look for other brands of pencils that had those colors or something close, but were lightfast. The brand I landed on was Faber-Castell Polychromos. Polychromos and Prismacolor pencils are perfect fits. They have a great selection of earth tones, blues and greens. They’re also oil-based so they’re perfect for using under wax-based Prismacolors.
I did also acquire a few odd and end pencils from other brands, but I can do everything I want to do using Polychromos and the lightfast colors of Prismacolor.
My History with Prismacolor Pencils
There are still problems with Prismacolor. The problems I find most often are off-center cores and warped pencils. But some pigment cores have been so broken, I couldn’t sharpen them, and some casings have split or come apart.
Despite that, I keep them around and continue to use them on some projects. When I draw on Stonehenge, I still prefer Prismacolors. Prismacolor and Stonehenge were made for each other, in my opinion.
While I still sometimes wonder how all those portraits look that I used non-lightfast colors on, I don’t really regret the years I spent using all the colors of Prismacolor. I gained a lot of skill with Prismacolor pencils. They took me a long way. The fact is that I don’t know where I would be as a colored pencil artist if I hadn’t been able to get Prismacolor pencils in the early days.
Are Prismacolor pencils your go-to pencil? Don’t worry. You don’t need to give them up. Depending on the type of art you make and the reason you make art, you can use all the colors.
But if you make art to sell on commission or as original art, then you might want to consider adding another brand of pencils to your colored pencil tool box. At the very least, replace some of your favorite fading Prismacolor colors with similar lightfast colors in other brands.
Sign up for Carrie’s free weekly newsletter and be among the first to know when she publishes new articles.
When I was in fifth grade, my aunt gave me a very cool clear plastic hinged box of 12 Prismacolors (maybe around 1970?). I might still have one or two from that box. When I began learning to really use colored pencils, I had no idea that any other brand existed and I kept adding to the colors. They are my first colored pencil “language”, and when the quality declined, it was with reluctance that I switched to Polychromos. I still occasionally use Prismacolor (where else will you find Grayed Lavender? Tuscan Red? Sky Blue? Lime Peel? Sand? sigh. . . ) but recognize the superior quality of Polychromos. I learned from the CPSA that Prismacolors can be repaired in a microwave, and I’ve had some success with that (but it is seriously inconvenient, since I don’t own a microwave.)
Jana,
I was given a collection of Prismacolors from the days when they were Eagle Prismacolor. The Eagle Pencil Company was the company that developed them. These Eagle pencils pre-date the Berol labeling, which happened in 1969. So these are really old pencils. I have 34 of the 50 colors in the original set. They are still good, but I don’t use them very often. The main problem is that they have no lightfast ratings because lightfastness wasn’t a concern back then.
But I know what you mean about still liking the way Prismacolors work. The colors you listed above are among my favorite colors, too.
You could try fixing pencils in a sunny window, or even in the back window of your car. I did that the first time by accident. I took my pencils to an all-day horse show one July weekend. I left my pencil box in the back window of my car and by mid-afternoon, using them was almost like drawing with oil pastels. Talk about buttery!
The best part is that no microwave is needed, and it doesn’t add to your energy bill!