Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils

It was through using the Hobonichi planner that I came across Prismacolor Premier colored pencils. Prismacolor happens to be the successor to the Eagle and Berol brands, and therefore the Eagle Verithin line lives on in Prismacolor; but I was unaware of all this before I actually went looking for them, because I only ever noticed Faber-Castell pencils in art supply shops back home.

First of all I liked the way they looked: round with silver lettering. They are pretty soft (one of the softest colored pencils currently available, it seems), and I use them mostly to highlight entries I write in ink in the Hobonichi, because I don’t like using actual highlighters and using colored ink or colored pencil alone to write doesn’t make the words pop enough. Most erase easily too. Another interesting aspect of Prismacolor is that they sell themed sets; there’s a Portrait Set made up of flesh colors, and there’s a Manga set with hard dark pencils for outlining and soft pastel-toned pencils for coloring. I don’t know if manga artists actually find this set useful, but for people like me, who are intimidated and bored at the same time by all those full-color-spectrum artist tin sets, this kind of thing is endlessly appealing. I toyed with the idea of purchasing the Manga set but ultimately settled for a bunch of pale pastel colors bought individually. (By the way, Tombow also markets unconventionally arranged colored pencils sets in their Irojiten series).

Prismacolor does seem to have some issues, though – they are supposedly not as lightfast as other brands, and the soft cores break easily (I had a dud too). However, they are affordable and pleasantly soft. If I ever use them up I might try a couple of Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils.