Your Expert Guide to Art Supplies in the UK
Somewhere between “I fancy trying colouring” and “I own £200 of pencils I’ve used twice” lies a very sensible middle ground: cheap coloured pencils. Not the pound-shop ones that snap the second you look at them funny, but genuinely decent sets that happen to cost less than a round of coffees for four. Cheap coloured … Read more
Stand in front of the pencil aisle in any UK art shop and you’ll understand the problem instantly: forty different tins, all promising to unlock your inner artist, none of them explaining what actually separates a lovely set from a waste of a tenner. A coloured pencil set for beginners is, in the simplest possible … Read more
Stand in front of an art shop wall of coloured pencils for long enough and you’ll start to feel a bit like you’re choosing a wand at Ollivander’s. Every tin promises “buttery,” “vibrant,” “professional grade” — and somewhere on the box, in small print, sits the detail that actually matters: whether that pencil is wax … Read more
Pick up a lump of graphite and you can shade. Pick up an oil based coloured pencil and you can build light out of nothing — layer by stubborn, waxy-smooth layer, until a bowl of clementines looks wet enough to lick. That’s the appeal, and also the trap: walk into the pencil aisle (or, more … Read more
Stand in front of an art shop shelf for more than thirty seconds and you’ll feel it: the quiet tug-of-war between the tidy tin of pencils and the little metal box of pans. Watercolour pencils vs watercolour paints isn’t just a shopping question, it’s a question about how you actually want to spend your Sunday … Read more
Somewhere between a sketchbook and a paint box sits one of the most underrated tools in the art world, and if you’ve typed “best watercolour pencils” into a search bar tonight, you’re about to discover why so many artists quietly swear by them. A watercolour pencil is exactly what it sounds like: a coloured pencil … Read more
Stand in front of an art supplies shelf for long enough and two tins will keep catching your eye: the dark green of Faber-Castell Polychromos and the black-and-gold of Prismacolor Premier. Faber-Castell vs Prismacolor coloured pencils is one of the oldest debates in coloured pencil art, and it’s not going away, because both ranges genuinely … Read more
The best coloured pencils for adult colouring combine soft, pigment-rich cores with break-resistant leads, so you get smooth laydown and easy blending without constantly reaching for the sharpener. Whether you’re filling in a mandala on the sofa or working through an intricate botanical spread at the kitchen table, the pencil in your hand matters more … Read more
Somewhere between the pencil tin and the finished drawing, a small miracle happens — waxy pigment turns into skin tones, feathers, storm clouds. But get the wrong artists coloured pencils and that miracle stalls: colours chalk up, favourite hues vanish in sunlight within a year, and the “professional” set you saved up for behaves like … Read more