I’m fairly new to colored pencil art and it’s been pretty easy to find review upon review of the best pencils. However, it’s been surprisingly difficult to find reliable information on the best paper to use to make them perform to their full potential.

Since I love experimenting with art supplies, I decided to do my own paper tests. I will be reviewing many types of paper and will share my thoughts here In my reviews, I will be using 4 different brands of artist-quality colored pencils:

• Caran d’Ache Luminance
• Caran d’Ache Pablo
• Prismacolor Premier Soft Core
• Faber-Castell Polychromos

Due to the composition of the cores (wax-based vs. oil‐based), I knew each product would preform a little differently on each type of paper. It’s important to know what your pencils are made of before choosing your paper. According to my research, the core composition of these 4 products is as follows:

Wax: Prismacolor Premier Soft Core

Oil: Faber-Castell Polychromos, Caran d’Ache Pablo.

Wax & Oil Blend: Caran d’Ache Luminance

The wax-based pencils tend to preform better on toothier, texturized paper while the oil-based pencils preform best on smoother papers. I’m going to try them all and let you know my thoughts. This exercise will be a great learning experience for me and I hope it will help you too.

Stay tuned for reviews. Sneak peek: the first up is Arches Rough Watercolor Paper.