How to Choose Your First Coloured Pencil Set

I get asked this all the time.

"Debbie, which pencils should I actually buy?"

It's a fair question. Walk into any art shop and you'll see tins ranging from £10 to £300. No wonder people freeze at the shelf.

So let's sort this out properly.

The three price tiers, and what you're really paying for

Budget pencils (think Crayola, Staedtler Noris Club, basic student ranges) are fine for practising shapes and getting comfortable holding a pencil. They won't build up rich colour the way you need for realistic animal work. The pigment is thin. You'll find yourself pressing harder and harder just to get any depth, and that's not a habit you want to build.

Mid-range pencils are where things get interesting. Faber-Castell Polychromos sit here, and this is genuinely where most of my students should start. Good pigment, good blending, and a price that won't make you wince.

Tin of 120 Polychromos Pencils

Professional-grade pencils (Luminance, Pablo, some of the Prismacolor Premier ranges) give you extra vibrancy and buttery application. They're lovely. But they're not where you need to start, and I'll explain why in a second.

Which pencils are actually worth investing in

Here's the thing nobody tells you. You don't need the whole tin.

You need the specific colours for the specific animal you're drawing. A hare needs a different palette to a robin. A black cat needs different tones again.

What I recommend to every single one of my students is Polychromos by Faber-Castell, bought individually, not as a full set.

If you're in the UK, you can get them for £1.80 each from The Colour Pencil Shop. That means you can build a proper working palette for a single piece for under £20, rather than spending £150 on a tin where you'll only ever touch a third of the colours.

That's the whole secret, honestly. Buy what you need, when you need it.

Which pencils aren't essential

Metallics. Fluorescents. Pastel tins with forty shades of "barely different beige."

You don't need any of it starting out. It's tempting, I know. Big tins feel like progress. They're not. They're just more pencils sitting in a drawer.

Skip the specialty sets until you actually know what you're missing. You'll know when you need something, because you'll be stuck trying to mix a colour that doesn't exist in your current palette.

How to avoid wasting money as a beginner

Here's my honest advice, and it's simpler than most people expect.

Pick one animal. Look at reference photos. Work out the five or six core colours you'll actually need. Buy those, individually, in a mid-range brand like Polychromos.

Don't buy a set because it looks impressive. Buy exactly what the drawing in front of you calls for.

This drawing was completed mostly in Polychromos pencils

You'll save money. You'll also learn your colours properly, because you're choosing each one on purpose instead of grabbing whatever's nearest in a big tin.

Start small. Build your collection piece by piece. That's how every good palette gets built, and it's a much calmer way to begin than staring at 120 pencils wondering where to start.

Take your time, enjoy the process, and trust the layers ✏️ —

Debbie, Paws & Pencils Art