Up until recently all I had in the way of coloured pencils was a small set from WHSmith which while not bad my colour choice was limited. But recently I bought the set of 72 Arteza coloured pencils, I had flip flopped between those or Prismacolor which at the the time were both on sale.

In the end I decided on the Arteza pencils due to both price and generally favourable reviews. It seems Prismacolor can sometimes have issues with breakage according to reviews I read, whereas I hadn’t seen that mentioned about the Arteza pencils. So far I am very happy with them but can’t really say if they are better or worse than Prismacolor seeing as I’ve never tried them.

My main reason for wanting more colour options was so I could finally do a project for Kendyll Hillegas’ Paint with Me: Create a Mixed Media Pastry Illustration class on Skillshare.

I chose a mince pie for my illustration, as it is one of my favourites.

I made some mistakes along the way but I also learnt a lot, even from the mistakes, I definitely feel I am getting a better grasp of working with coloured pencils, how to layer and blend them especially.

For her previous class where I made the Dragon Fruit I used watercolour paper which I admit I struggled with a little so for this one I used mixed media paper and definitely found it easier.

Hopefully at some point in the future I will do a project for her botanical class as well.