Colored Pencil and Pastel Care

Artists who love to draw with colored pencils or paint with pastels often find themselves accumulating a vast collection. It can be difficult to find an ideal storage solution that ensures optimal quality over time. Here are some tips for the care and storage of your artistic tools:

Caring for Colored Pencils - Prismacolor Premier® Soft Core Colored Pencils are beloved by artists for their vibrant color and blending/shading.

Keep them out of heat or direct sunlight. With their soft wax core, exposure to heat can cause the pigment inside to make for a messy application. 

Storing them vertically with the tip up helps prevent tip breakage and makes it easy to find different colors. You may also store them horizontally, but if you have a lot of colored pencils, it may make it more difficult to find colors. 

Caring for Pastels - The rich, creamy pigments of pastels offer artists a look that seems painterly in their composition. Prismacolor Premier® NuPastels are perfect for achieving this, so you want to care for them as best you can.

You can store your pastels in a variety of different places though many artists prefer wooden drawers for a more elegant look. As with colored pencils, avoid leaving them in heat or direct sunlight.

Since many pastels only have an identification number on one end, some artists break their pastel into two pieces, putting the piece with the ID number away for safe keeping. When the other piece has worn out, they just reference the piece they saved.

Artists love Prismacolor Color Pencils and Prismacolor NuPastels. Share how you organize yours with #PencilPerfection or #PastelPerfection on Instagram.