Talk to me about Colored Pencils!

[Nefarous]

Hey Everyone.

I was just wondering if anyone could tell me about colored pencil. Or send me some links! What is the best brands (in their opinion), blending and anything else I need to know. I have prismacolors, but I am a failure when working with them. I get the nice "wax bloom" in everything I do or its extremely grainy. Every colored pencil works I attempted, I ruined... and I really want to figure it out.

Thanks for the help :)

[Vaco]

Prismacolors work very well - the best way to work with them in my experience has been to use crosshatching. I haven't yet found a brand which blends well any other way.

[arttorney]

Aye! Cross-hatching. I have gotten color mixing by just shading one color over another but it seems to lead to that grainy look you discussed. If you will have a texture no matter what you do, it might as well be a texture that looks like you did it on purpose.

[Nefarous]

Thank ya kindly for the responses! I thought I would hear nothing back.

I will try cross hatching. Maybe I am just not patient enough.

What do you guys think of those blending pencils?

[Elwell]

Check out Bill Nelson's (http://www.billnelsonstudios.com/) work.

[Quofalcon]

Prismacolor Colored Pencils are decent. All-round quality and good for its prices. Different series, like Verithin and each having their own slant to the quality and results. For the blending, use a very light colored prisma (which I prefer) like Cream or White. There are special Colorless Blenders, but they tend to leave a 'warmer' finish than your intended color blending. If you get my meaning.

[Dreamworker]

I use Faber Castel polychromos and I found those type of pencils good. I use a withe pastel for blending or, if possible, the middle tone color in a second layer. For now I'm not really satisfied, especially for a poor contrast that I obtain but, I suppose, is a question of practice ( i paint with this technique recently ).
P.S. this is a last work with colored pencils (http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=114108)

[Cory Hinman]

You avoid the bloom by lightly layering line by line, "cross-hatching", your strokes, as opposed to bearing down with a lot of pressure. "Caravaggio kitty" below was one of my first cp experiments about 20 years ago, it's never developed that bloom.
Keep your pencils very sharp to avoid the grainy look, which results from a too-blunt point hitting the paper's hills and missing the valleys. I have a set palette for "underpainting". When I draw I have 3 or so of each of these colors sharpened and ready to go, so as one gets too blunt I can switch rapidly instead of breaking up the drawing rythym with sharpening.
Disclaimer; the "Ian/Bilbo" below has been value-adjusted in PS. Thought I'd saved an untouched version, but I can't find it, and the original sold long ago.