A year or so ago I wrote about Koh-i-Noor Magic FX pencils. The lead is a checkerboard pattern of three colors. The pencils come in several color combinations. They are great for making textured backgrounds on paper.

Since then I have found several other multicolor pencils that you may also want to look for. 

Magic FX Multicolor Pencils

At the time I first wrote about them, Magic FX pencils were pretty easy to find in hobby and craft stores, discount stores, even in drugstores. Last autumn, however, LaQuita wrote in a comment that she could not find them locally and asked if they can be purchased on line.

The short answer is Yes, they can be ordered on line. One place to find them is Texas Art Supply. The trick is to finding them on the web site. So here is a direct link to Magic FX pencils on the Texas Art Supply website. 

Quattro by Cretacolor Junior 

Since then I have found another interesting pencil that does the same thing, the Quattro by Cretacolor Junior, made in Austria. This you would most likely only find at art supply stores. Texas Art Supply sells it, too.

The Quattro has a four-color lead, with red, blue, yellow and green arranged like the wedges of a pie chart. In the picture below, the Cretacolor Junior Quattro pencil is at the top, and a Koh-i-Noor Magic FX pencil is below it.  As you can see, the Quattro is a little slimmer than the Magic FX.

Rainbow Swirl Pencils by RoseArt

A few months ago I found similar pencils at a Target store (a discount chain in the U.S.). In these the colors are arranged in random swirls instead of a checkerboard pattern, but they should do about the same thing.

They are called Rainbow Swirl pencils. They are made by Rose Art, which is a good-quality cheap brand that is sold by several discount stores in the United States.

True to Life Pencils and Twist-Up Crayons by Crayola

At Target I also found two brand new products by Crayola: True to Life pencils, and True to Life twist-up crayons.

So far, I have only seen these at Target, but Crayola does sell their products at their web site, http://www.crayola.com, so you should be able to order them there.

If you find any of these or similar pencils, especially if you are outside the U.S.A., please leave a comment, letting everyone else know where to buy them. IMPORTANT: Put no more than one link to a web site in each comment. Otherwise, my SPAm filter may delete the comment before I ever see it. But feel free to leave a comment for each source that you find. Thanks!

They are wonderful for embellishing the pages of journals, cards, paintings, drawings, illustrations, and a lot of other things. They’re just fun.

As the package says, they are sooooooo smooth, like drawing with lipstick, and you can blend them easily with your fingers. You may have seen these in their previous version, where they looked like glue sticks in primary colors. You get six colors for about $3.99. I found them at Walgreen’s.

Elmer’s earlier product, Crayon Sticks, are really the same thing in a different package. You get five colors in what look like colored glue stick tubes for about $1.99. I’ve even found larger sets with about 12 colors at a party supply warehouse. (See, fun art supplies are everywhere!)

I think Crayon Sticks may have been phased out, because I havent noticed any lately, but you may find some at a large craft store such as Michaels or Hobby Lobby.

Crayola twist-up ERASABLE crayons are sold in most drugstores and some grocery stores (and anywhere else that sells art or school supplies). What the package doesn’t tell you is that they are more like giant mechanical pencils than crayons.

They are not waxy. So if you don’t lay them on too thickly, if you use them lightly, you can write over them with just about any ballpoint pen, rollerball pen, gel pen, or whatever. they are great for use in art journals or for adding color to sketches.

They also are not as messy as wax crayons in that you can leave them in the car without melting (though it may not be good for them), and you can erase stray marks with plastic eraser.