Watercolor, Oil Pastels, Crayons, Coloring Pencils- Which Suits You the Best and Why?

[Violet Link]

The 4 simple types of coloring items are exactly watercolors, oil pastels, crayons and coloring pencils. My question here now is which of the 4 of these suits you and is easy to use?
To me it's the watercolor. I really love painting and I really love to blend in the color and mix all of the colors. As for the other 3, it's oddly hard enough for me to use it. I really don't know why but watercolors suits me the best.

So how about all of you? Which of the 4 is suitable for you?

 

[Spirit]

i suck at art so i can't use any items from the list very well but i do love watercolour paintings so i'll choose those =]

 

[Azure Sage]

I prefer to draw in black and white, so I rarely color my drawings. On the off chance that I do decide to color, I will choose colored pencils. They're the neatest of the four, and quite frankly they're easier for me to get my hands on than watercolors or oil pastels. I don't really like to use crayons at all.

 

[TheRizardon]

I'm not very good at art, but when I do draw, I like to use color pencils. A color pencil feels a lot more comfortable than a crayon.

 

[Burning Beast]

I'm like Azure when it comes to this, preferring to leave my (horrible) sketches black and white. If I do color anything it is also with Coloring Pencils, although I will use Markers now and then, but only to color myself when playing games with siblings or going to watch a football game. Don't use the other three that often.

 

[Linknerd09]

Crayons and Colored Pencils. I sometimes color my drawings when I want to. I just like how the Colored Pencils blend for me. Just awesome. Crayons, I use one crayon and that's the peach colored skin. I wish I have the peach colored Colored Pencil.

 

[Fraxinus]

These are the "four simple coloring items"? Really? Where did you hear that? Um, dunno if you're aware of this, but there are, like, a gajillion coloring mediums out there, so I kind of find it unfair that this thread is just for these four. =/ Personally, I like myself some acrylic paint, but nerm.

Of the four listed, I'd almost say oil pastel, but then I remembered that chalk pastels are ninety times better and aren't as filmy on my hands. I think I have to say watercolor because there are a bunch of possible watercolor utensils--those über soft brushes, watercolor pencils, liquid watercolors, your typical solid watercolors... there's just a lot to choose from, and each has its own special touch to a piece. Plus, watercolor paper is really awesomely awesome.

 

[Beeker]

Lately when I've coloured, that has been digitally, so it could be any of those

Traditionally I use either pencil crayons or paint(most often acrylic). For one of my major projects last semester, my teacher preferred and encouraged me to use more watercolour, as it gave more freedom and had more emotion than my stiff acrylic pieces which took way longer. Besides, I think the look of watercolour is so beautiful!

 

[Hachi]

...Oh, colored pencils. I've seen some AMAZING work come from them, and it was actually my medium of choice when I was in middle and early high school, but to use them properly you need to really be... patience.

<== Is not patience, especially with coloring.


With that said, I really enjoy pastels, but I've never used oil ones before... which maybe I should because my main complaint is how messy they are. And although it's not used for coloring, charcoal falls into the same category. It's my favorite traditional medium to work with, but gezz I just hate using it because my entire hand becomes completely black and gross and I'm worried people think I'm a dirty hobo who doesn't know how to wash her hands or something. D8

Markers are fun, but they tend to stress me out because they are so freaking expensive it feels like every blot of ink equals a few nickles and dimes. + the paper for them is also really overpriced if you don't get it on sale, so I feel like I can never experiment or have fun with them. I was also forced into buying specific color packs for my illustration class with lots of colors for backgrounds, so now I have about $300 dollars worth of really ugly green and brown Copics.... hurrah? ;_;

Watercolor is one of my favorite mediums because it's so easy to make look nice without a lot of effort or practice, it only really requires a few simple techniques. Very stress free and highly recommend for colorphobes who are worried about messing up their art with other coloring mediums. Once again though it does take a bit of patience in between layers or you end up with a mucky brown as the final product. Only drawback is the price of really good water paper, and then having to stretch it can be annoying when your all inspired and have to wait to get started. Watercolor is pretty cheap too, even a set of the cheap cake ones from a good brand will work. It takes a little bit of an investment at first, but I've had mine for around six years now and I'm not even close to running out. Though if you want some really rich color opacity upgrading to a more expensive set might be worth it or just moving up to fancy pants Gauche works too.

As for acrylics or oil paints, to be honest they are my least favorite to work with. > D>; Oils stink and give me a headache so I don't ever use them, and while acrylics are alright they have a tendency to dry too quickly which makes them almost impossible to do much blending with. I think there are some additives you can get which will make them dry much slower, but once again I hate chemical smells so... I'd just rather stick with Watercolors TBH.

TLDR: I hate being messy, but covering an entire sheet of paper with the itty bitty tiny point of a colored pencil makes me want strangle myself and I'm too poor to use Copics on a regular basis, SO WATERCOLORS!?

 

[DisappearingMist]

I love using oil pastels! I do very little art these days, unfortunately, but when I get the urge, pastels help get what I want onto the paper easily. I have little success with watercolor, but I'd like to do more painting with oil paint sometime....

 

[Shadsie]

What about taking a 5th option?

My favorite medium is acrylic paint. It's fairly easy to clean (but also easy to ruin clothing with) and it's versitle, versitle, versitle! It works for thick impasto-styles, slathers of opaque paint and also works like watercolor with transparent washes. Acrylics can be used on almost freakin' anything, too - and some of the stuff I like to paint on definitely falls into the "anything" category.

If you want me to stick in the 4 you mentioned... Um, I like a combination of two of those: Watercolor pencils. I think they'd technically fall into "watercolors" but they are in pencil form and can be used as colored pencils to a degree. A typical techinque is filling in some color, then washing a brush over it to distrubute and smooth-out the color. As far as portable sketching-colors, they're my favorite. Again, as with acrylics in painting, I like the versatility. They do only work on paper and they work best on watercolor-grade paper... but I got a watercolor sketchbook this Fall *just* for sketching pretty leaves out in the woods with my watecolor pencils.

 

[Imprisoned]

Watercolours are kinda messy, I never use pastels of any kind, crayons don't taste good, and I agree with Hachi about the coloured pencils. (I wipe acrylic paint on my pants if I use it.) So, what do I use?
Two things. Clay and my musical instruments to create art.
I prefer clay. With smocks. Smock is fun to say! Say it with me without smiling. Yell it: Smock smock smock smock smock smock. I tried. Yes, I like Calvin and Hobbes.

 

[Sydney]

The 4 simple types of coloring items are exactly watercolors, oil pastels, crayons and coloring pencils. My question here now is which of the 4 of these suits you and is easy to use?
To me it's the watercolor. I really love painting and I really love to blend in the color and mix all of the colors. As for the other 3, it's oddly hard enough for me to use it. I really don't know why but watercolors suits me the best.

So how about all of you? Which of the 4 is suitable for you?

Whoa, bro, there's a LOT more than just four. I just wanted to put that out there.

I hate coloring my drawings with a passion. I much more prefer shading and blending my pieces with pencil graphite (I'm not big on charcoal). There always comes a time when I'm forced to color something, in which case I prefer to use colored pencils. Colored pencils are very simplistic but, unlike mediums such as markers, you have the ability to make the color light, medium, dark, and so on. One type of colored pencil I've always wanted to try were watercolor pencils. The way I've seen them in use, the colors work quite nicely. One of my favorite artists (cartoongirl7) uses copic markers to color her pieces. The way she uses them amazes me, considering she's able to shade even when using such a bold medium. However, copic markers (iirc) are extremely expensive, but I suppose it's worth it if that's what you're in to.

 

[octorok74]

I'm more of a coloured pencil guy. I like seeing my work all bright. Second would be regular pencils, but I'm not too good at shading. Not like some of these other members.

 

[Terminus]

Colored pencils, because that's what I own.

I still suck at shading. I am really, really not good.