With some companies charging several hundred dollars for their best colored pencils, while others only charge a few bucks for a cheap set of colored pencils – surely there has to be more that goes into creating a colored pencil than just wood and lead, right?

To be honest, I was completely surprised by how involved the production process actually was… and equally surprised that companies don't charge more!

Today, we'll explore what colored pencils are made of and share a video from the "How It's Made" folks (remember that show?!) that gives you a behind-the-scenes look at how top brands make their colored pencils.

Let's dive into this deeply complicated process and learn what colored pencils are made of:

What Goes Into Making A Colored Pencil

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To make a colored pencil, you'll need four key ingredients:

Wood
Pigments
Binders
Extenders

Let's examine how each one is critically important:

Wood

Naturally, the wood barrel of the colored pencil is essential for holding the lead core together. However, in recent years, this traditional casing has started to be challenged.

With woodless colored pencils entering the market and even the most popular brands embracing 100% sustainable wood sources, more companies are looking to slightly alter how colored pencils are made.

Pigments

One of the most instantly noticeable and important qualities of colored pencils is the pigment(s). Pigments can vary greatly from one brand to the next and even between colors.

When comparing cheap vs. professional colored pencils, the pigment will be the largest difference in both price and application. Pigment concentration in higher-end brands produces much more vibrant and striking results.

Additionally, the types of pigments sourced also impact a brand's lightfastness rating. For example, artist-grade brands like Caran d'Ache provide color charts that explain the number of pigments used in each colored pencil and their respective lightfastness ratings:

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Take the Green Ochre (025) colored pencil, for instance. This pencil contains five different pigments:

PY3
PY42
PY13
PO62
PBk6

This tells us that there are many different colors coming out of the lead when you make a mark on the paper. Since this isn't a 'pure pigment,' it may appear slightly duller compared to others.

This information is extremely useful when using colored pencils, as you can find like colors that share the same exact pigment composition. For example, green ochre, yellow ochre, raw sienna, brown ochre, and olive brown all contain the yellow PY42 pigment. Mixing these colors together would be a smart and harmonious choice.

Lastly, there's the lightfastness rating. If you're creating artwork meant to be displayed for years, lightfastness is crucial. However, no single brand can create perfect lightfastness ratings for all their colors due to the chemical structure of organic pigments. Some are naturally more prone to fading when exposed to light.

The ASTM provides guidance for determining lightfastness, defined as follows:

Very poor lightfastness = V (less than 2 years)
Poor lightfastness = IV (2-15 years)
Fair lightfastness = III (15-50 years)
Very good lightfastness = II (50-100 years)
Excellent lightfastness = I (over 100 years)

Above information was sourced from Wikipedia.

Another metric to determine lightfastness is the blue wool scale, but during our research, we haven't found a colored pencil that follows these guidelines.

Binders

Binders, also sometimes referred to as resins, are essentially the glue that holds the pigment in place when mixed together. This ensures an even distribution of pigment throughout the entire lead core of your pencils.

Binders can vary greatly, from gum arabic and paraffin wax to oily compounds. The type of binder used can drastically change how the pencil performs when the lead interacts with the paper.

Extenders

Used in tandem with binders, extenders help ensure that the lead has a firm body. The amount of extenders used can dictate whether the lead feels soft and buttery or more rigid.

Additionally, extenders can help reduce the price of the pencil by decreasing the amount of binder and pigment needed.

Subsets Of Colored Pencil Types

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While we touched on different compositions within the binders, we want to expand on this further since it's important for understanding how colored pencils are made.

In the marketplace, there are two primary types of colored pencils:

Wax-based
Oil-based

Here's more detail on each:

Wax-Based Leads

By far the most popular type of colored pencil is the wax-based core. This type of pencil goes on smoothly and creates a relatively slick surface.

Prized for their blending abilities, artists love these pencils as they can layer with relative ease. Wax-based colored pencils can also be used with solvents to dissolve the wax and pigment onto the paper.

Common solvents used by professional artists include baby oil or xylene. Based on our research, xylene is a much more effective method as it's chemically opposite to the paraffin wax used in colored pencils, resulting in cleaner blends.

Companies like Chartpak and others make xylene-based blending pens.

One downside to wax-based colored pencils is that they experience wax blooms. This occurs when the wax begins to oxidize after a few days. To counteract this, you can simply wipe your drawing with a dry cloth. If you want to prevent it from happening again, a fixative will help seal your drawing from further air exposure.

Oil-Based Leads

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Opposite of wax-based colored pencils are oil-based colored pencils. This variant is much rarer and is exclusive to a few brands, such as Faber-Castell Polychromos and LYRA Polycolor's.

These pencils provide buttery and slick results, and some artists claim the colors appear more vivid than typical wax-based pencils. However, oil-based pencils require different solvents, such as odorless mineral spirit or turpentine, to dissolve. Using baby oil or xylene here will not work and may ruin the paper.

Can You Make Colored Pencils At Home?

While there are countless DIY blogs offering solutions for everything under the sun, colored pencils are one product you simply can't make at home with sticks and wood dye. Sorry, DIYers.

The process of mixing pigment with binders and extenders, along with inserting them into molds, requires specialized ingredients and tools. If you're into DIY, you might want to explore acrylic or oil painting, where raw oils, acrylic polymers, and pigments are readily available.

Video Explaining What Colored Pencils Are Made Of

The TV show How It's Made is a long-running series that follows countless products through their production process. In this short 5-minute video, they visit the Caran d'Ache factory and show how they make their Luminance colored pencils.

Remember when we said some colored pencils could cost upwards of a couple hundred bucks? This is how those pencils are made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIz80cdWG3s

Getting The Most Out Of This Medium

Whether you're researching colored pencils for an article (if so, please link or reference us!) or trying to get the most out of your colored pencils, understanding their composition is key.

At first glance, colored pencils seem like a straightforward product, but as you've learned today, that's far from the case. We hope this article has provided valuable insights into how this widely used art medium is made.