Prismacolor

Prismacolor is perhaps the most well known brand of coloured pencil in North and South America and Canada. Until fairly recently, Prismacolor was the artists choice goto pencil, however, despite their creamy constancy, serious quality control issues developed. 

I've tried to conduct a bit of research on this company and their products, however, everything I find is a bit sketchy to say the least. From what I am lead to believe, and please correct me if I am wrong and I will obviously amend my blog, Sanford is the company name that produce Prismacolor pencils. However, other sites claim that the parent company producing Prismacolor pencils are Newell Rubbermaid. 

Regardless of who owns the company, most long term users of Prismacolor will tell you that the pencil seriously changed about ten years ago, give or take. The core of the pencil remains the same in terms of pigment and how the pencil lays down colour, but in terms of the core being central, this does not happen any more. The reason why this is such a big problem is because when sharpening the pencil, if the core is not central, it will break as they are twisted. 

Another major problem with the pencil is the wood casing that the core is held into. Cedar wood is normally used in coloured pencils, but long term veterans of Prismacolor, who really know the pencil, say this has changed. Many pencils will split all the way along when sharpening, rendering it useless. 

Things have become so bad with the pencil that there are dedicated web sites showing you how to try and save your pencils from breaking. I have personal experience of this problem which I will go into deeper detail during my review. However, it is such a shame with regards to the quality control of this pencil as the actual pigment and creamy consistency of this pencil is a delight to use. Never the less, when you are spending quite a bit of your hard earned money on these pencils, the last thing in the world you want is to have defected pencils before you even start using them. 

Prismacolour Range

As with so many companies, Prismacolor have one or two unique products in their arsenal and I hope that one day the company will care enough to get back that excellent quality control that they clearly once had, for Prismaolor is a beautiful pencil to use, when you don't have to fight against it. 

The range of coloured pencils from Prismacolor are as follows. Prismacolor Premier which have the largest range of colour over any coloured pencil company, Prismacolor Watercolor, Prismacolor Scholar which are student grade pencils, Prismacolor Verithin which are a slightly harder core pencil over the soft creamy Premier and their unique product is the Prismacolor Scholar Erasable and Color Erase. Coloured pencil does not erase very well, however, the pigment in the Scholar and Color Erasable is such that they erase quite well. 

Prismacolor also produce Pastels and have also gone head to head with Copic in the artist grade markers. They also produce erasers, colourless blenders, sharpeners and many more items.