Today, colored pencils are much more than something an artist uses to prepare a sketch in preparation for painting. The colored pencils give a great variety to the user to have desired effects while painting or executing various other activities. These colored pencils come in hundreds of colors and variety of finishes. That is why it is essential to have a great selection of colored pencil sets to choose from such as the traditional artist and designer pencils, through watercolor, soluble graphite, pastel pencils and more to experiment with.
Colored pencils come mainly in three types: wax-based, oil-based and water color pencils.
The wax-based pencils are mostly plain colored pencils and are very easily available in stores. The oil- based pencils are nothing but the lead is oil based just like the oil-pastels. The watercolor pencils are versatile pencils because they are water-soluble and can be used in different ways.
Like any other pencils colored pencils differ in pigment density, light fastness, solubility, texture and blendability. The artist needs to understand the difference to get the desired effect in his art. Watercolor pencils are ranked from hard to soft providing better transparency and ink like effect to the painting. One should buy only light fast colors if you want to keep your painting for long as other colors fade away with the passage of time.