When I get a
new set of colored pencils, pastels, etc. it drives me bonkers that the colors
are usually all jumbled up with no way to know exactly what colors I have, much
less how to find the particular color I am looking for. To alleviate this problem,
the first thing I do with a new set is to arrange them according to the color
wheel. Knowing exactly how many colors I have of blue-green, for instance,
saves me a great deal of time when planning a drawing , painting, or a color
scheme for an adult coloring book page.
Many years
ago, I purchased The Liquitex Acrylic Color Map & Mixing Guide. Recently, I
looked high and low to try to find one for sale but apparently the company
stopped making it. If you happen to find one, grab it with both hands. It has
proven to be an invaluable resource over the past 30 plus years of my career as
an illustrator. With the map, I can hold each pencil up to the color chips and
match it to determine its hue according to the color wheel. I can then arrange
all of the pencils, from left to right, in the following sequence: Red-Violet
(RV), Red (R), Red-Orange (RO), Orange (O), Yellow-Orange (YO), Yellow (Y),
Yellow-Green (YG), Green (G), Blue-Green (BG), Blue (B), Blue-Violet (BV), and
Violet (V). Within each of those twelve sections, I arrange the pencils from
light to dark.
It does take
some time to do this but it is time well spent.
This arrangement makes choosing color schemes and planning layering of
colors a breeze. Lucky for you, I am sharing this arrangement for the 132 color
set of Prismacolor Pencils with you, free of charge. I hope it will prove as
useful to you as it is to me. The downloadable and printable pdf has a close up picture of each of the six trays and includes a list of each pencil's name, number, and color group to assist you in arranging all of the pencils, from left to right, in the following sequence: Red-Violet
(RV), Red (R), Red-Orange (RO), Orange (O), Yellow-Orange (YO), Yellow (Y),
Yellow-Green (YG), Green (G), Blue-Green (BG), Blue (B), Blue-Violet (BV), Violet (V), and Greys.
You will be taken to my Dropbox for a safe and secure download of the free PDF.
