When selecting art supplies, discovering which is “better” often requires examining the purpose of the work at hand. Coloring books are usually projects for personal pleasure, so the colorist’s preference certainly counts! The use to which the page will be put is also a consideration. Will it be for the colorist’s collection? Will it be displayed? Will the page be given as a gift? Answering these questions can influence deciding whether pens or pencils are better for coloring books.
Whether pens or pencils are better for coloring books depends upon the pen or pencil type whether the coloring book is printed on single sides or both sides, and the purpose of the art project at hand.
Read on to discover more about the various types of pens and pencils available for use in coloring books and which ones are best suited to your kind of coloring book project. As an overall interpretation, pens create bright, long-lasting colors suited to works with a cheerful insouciance. Pencils tend to be more muted, easier to blend, and create a mellow or even melancholy effect.
Pens
Overall, pens tend to have brighter colors that last longer than colored pencils. When discussing pens for coloring books, you need to ask, “What kind of pens, made by what company? Pens come in a variety of styles and types. Some of them are specially made for coloring books, while others are geared more toward making posters, writing on containers, high lighting, or taking notes. Getting the right pen for the job at hand is an important part of the selection process. With that said, there are several basic pen types to consider.
Basic school marking pens with wide nibs or thin
These are your basement-level pens, usually made with felt tips that can be around a pointed felt tip or a chisel felt tip. They do a good job on single-sided work but often bleed through the paper to the other side, making them unsuitable for coloring books that have pictures on both sides. However, they are perfectly fine for single-sided applications.
Brush and pen sets
These usually have a fine-tip felt pen on one end with a wide felt tip on the other. Depending on the manufacturer, they might or might not bleed through paper. It is a good idea to test them on an unimportant part of your coloring book before using them for a full picture. These are useful not only for lettering but also can be applied almost like brushed on watercolor.
Fine-line felt-tip art pens
These are usually calibrated to not leak through your page. They can be used to color almost any coloring book but will take a long time to fill in wide expanses of color. They are excellent for highly detailed drawings, hatching, and cross-hatching. They can be used for pointillism, but the user will need to take care not to mash the felt tips.
Gel pens
These are a relatively recent development in art supplies, gaining popularity in the 1990s. They are ballpoint pens with colored ink, frequently sporting neon or even glow-in-the-dark colors.
Glitter gel pens
You guessed it. Those gel pins gained metallic glitter to go with their bright colors. The effect can be startling, beautiful, or simply garnish, depending upon the application.
Colored Ball Point Pens
These are more ordinary ballpoint pens, popular with note takers who like to color-code their notes, but also usable by artists. The pens’ original colors were blue, black, and red, but the sets gained other colors as time went on.
Indelible Marking Pens
Not usually used for coloring books because they do bleed through and because if the colorist manages to get the ink on their fingers, it will need to wear off rather than being washed off. These are normally used for marking lids of canning jars, storage boxes, labels on clothing for camp, or travel tags for suitcases. They are also sometimes used for marking library books and other circulating material because of their permanent nature.
Pencils
Colored pencils have a long and honorable place as office tools and as art supplies. At one time, red pencils were used for writing those dreaded negative balances on a business’s “bottom line.” From this custom comes the expression “in the red” for business or personal accounts that are carrying a negative balance.
As art supplies, colored pencils have long had a place for making color sketches of a plan for a larger or more complete artwork. They have their place as part of an architect’s planning kit. Students prized them for making detailed maps for homework assignments, and (of course) they have been and are used for coloring pictures in coloring books as well as creating original artwork. Although colored pencils have been around longer than art pens, they are available in fewer types. The colors created with colored pencils tend to be more muted than those made with pens but are generally easier to blend. Again, the brand and type of pencil will have a bearing on how it performs when used in a coloring book. Here are the basic types:
Wax-based Soft-Core Pencils
These are available from a variety of brands and are often offered as a basic set to be used as school supplies. They usually sharpen easily with a hand sharpener and can be used for wide color expanses, as well as to pick out delicate details in drawings. They are also available as artist-quality sets. They usually blend well, and hold their color adequately but are susceptible to wax bloom.
Wax-based hard-core pencils
They share a lot of the characteristics of soft-core pencils but hold their points better and are better for hatching or fine details. They are, as the name implies, harder and scratchier for coloring.
Oil-based core pencils
Like their cousins, the wax-based pencils come in hard or soft cores. They blend better than wax-based pencils and sometimes have brighter colors since they are closely akin to oil pastels.
Graphite-based core pencils
These are usually sold as sketching pencils and are available in a limited range of colors, usually in grayscale or sepia tones. They are excellent for creating monochrome works, which can be interesting when applied to a coloring book page but are certainly not your ordinary fare.
Check out our other supply recommendations HERE.
Conclusion
In the long run, your choice of medium – pen or pencil – will be influenced by personal preference and by the purpose of your project. If you are coloring for yourself as a creative hobby that will let you wind down at the end of the day, you might be influenced by the way the pen or pencil feels in your hand, the way it sounds as it is applied to the page or the way it covers or adapts to fine, delicate areas of your picture.
On the other hand, if you are planning to display the picture or if you will give it as a gift, you might want a color medium that will last, without fading, over time. The feel of the pencil or pen in your hand becomes immaterial, and you will want to focus on how the color goes onto the page and whether it achieves the effect you seek.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is more expensive, pens or pencils?
Pencils are, for the most part, more expensive than an initial purchase. A good set of graduated colors can run into hundreds of dollars. Pens tend to be less expensive as an initial purchase, a truly good set of art pens running somewhere between $30 to $75, but they do not last as well. A quality set of pencils might last several years, whereas pens will tend to dry up and be unusable after a year or two, even when carefully capped.
What kinds of grip shapes are available for these pens or pencils?
All the types of grip that are available for standard handwriting pens or pencils are available for colored pens or pencils. These might include barrels that are round, hexagonal, triangular, or even square. Some of the better coloring sets include soft grips that make it easier to hold and use the pen for several minutes at a time.
Why is the sound that the pen or pencil makes as it is applied important?
Many colorists use their coloring book coloring as a means to chill out and destress at the end of the day. If the colorist finds the scratchy sound of a hard pencil core annoying, then that somewhat defeats the purpose of using a coloring book. On the other hand, if the colorist finds the soft scraping of the pencil against paper soothing, then that would be a good choice for that person. You will perhaps note while shopping for pens that some state that they are odorless. This has to do with early coloring pens having been created with scents that went along with the colors. This is another thing that someone who is trying to relax might find either annoying or attractive as part of their coloring experience.
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