Poll of the Day > So Pencil Crayons (Colored Pencils) Are Awesome...

(+) Yeah! (+)

Color Felts/Markers too

Everyone should have these. They cost almost nothing and let you draw things in all kinds of different colors. Why aren't these seen as more standard? Rather than sort of a childish/girly thing to do? These are must-have.

Trying to draw a map in the game I'm playing and needed colors for 6+ different faction borders, but all I had was red, blue, black, and luckily a green pen, as well as pencil. That sort of worked, but now that I have pencil crayons, I can make draw in orange, brown, pink, and million other colors, and it colors things a lot better than a ballpoint pen. And then I can use a black felt to draw transitions and it writes over the border colors so cleanly.

https://imgur.com/DYZrIwH

---

---

Yeah my wife and me have some coloring books for quiet/chill days inside and I prefer to use colored pencils. They just feel better imo. She uses markers though for hers

---

I don't even really mean for art necessarily, but that's a fine use also.

It's like, the ability to draw color seems underrated. There's an entire means of conveying information there that you don't even have access to unless you specifically obtain colored writing utensils. It should be a standard part of office equipment or something. It's treated as something you only do for fun, or casually/for-kids, rather than a serious part of recording information.

---

What game?
---

Revelation34 posted...

What game?

One piece also one piece is trash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JCYo2zfVt4


---

Try Prismacolor. Those pencils are fantastic and blend really well.

---

uh oh, someone gunna get addicted to Adult Colouring Books like a grandma!

---

Revelation34 posted...

What game?

X: Beyond the Frontier

Lokarin posted...

uh oh, someone gunna get addicted to Adult Colouring Books like a grandma!

no... missing the point still

---

My mother likes to color, though she's kind of annoyed that every adult coloring book seems to be overcomplicated/psychedelic, while simpler coloring books all seem to be made for kids, and you wind up with nothing but Marvel comics or My Little Pony.



Sahuagin posted...

Why aren't these seen as more standard? Rather than sort of a childish/girly thing to do? These are must-have.

Probably because the average person has literally no reason to even own 2 colors to write with, let alone dozens.

I've been doing a lot of brainstorming/note-taking for a D&D game I'm running soon and the most I ever used at any given time was 4 (black, blue, red, green). I didn't even have to dip into the purple pen I have. And I'm fully aware that even that much is pretty far down the scale of common application - I'm an outlier of an outlier. Someone who needed a dozen different colors or more would be even more so.

Most people today - if they're using actual writing implements at all (and not just using a phone/computer for everything they write) - are fine with 1 or 2 colors, tops (usually black and red). And for people who want more, there are always those 4-color pens that pretty much everyone owned at some point as a kid:

http://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wc-prod-pim/JPEG_1000x1000/BI80186712_B_bic_4_colour_retractable_ballpoint_pens_12_pack.jpg

It's also worth noting that, for anyone who DOES want multicolor, pens can still handle that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gel_pen#Inks



Sahuagin posted...

Trying to draw a map in the game I'm playing and needed colors for 6+ different faction borders

Obligatory "What game were you playing?" question here.

Also, I feel like, if I was ever playing a game where I needed to draw complex maps, AND I needed to diagram 6+ factions, I might just stop drawing it in pen entirely and just switch to MS Paint, which has an ample palette of colors and brush/tip types to choose from.

That's basically how I drew settlement trade route maps for Fallout 4 - opened a world map picture in MS Paint that showed all the settlements, then drew colored lines between them to indicate which settlement was sending traders to where, so I could easily assign jobs once I started weaving a network together.
---

Using coloured pens to colour-code stuff in an office setting isn't uncommon, which covers most of the potential utility of coloured pencils. You get more shades with coloured pencils, but professional settings usually call for higher contrast than that (and really, if you need more than 6-7 colours to colour-code your data, colour-coding it probably isn't the most efficient way to organize it), such that you can't use all that many colours anyway. Toss in that best practice dictates that professional documents should remain legible even if they're photocopied or faxed in black and white, and there just isn't that much actual need for coloured pencils.

---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

the average person has literally no reason to even own 2 colors

argument from ignorance/lack of imagination

adjl posted...

professional settings

in an office you have computers and color printers, so your high-end documents don't need to be literally drawn with color by hand. I didn't really mean high-end office work, I mean "office supplies". pens, pencils, staplers, etc. are all super common, but color in general seems not to be used enough. even when you do come across things that have colors, like highlighters, there's still only a few shades.

there are also issues of color-blindness, where color can be used to convey information, but that only works until someone can't see the color. (I knew a guy who had zero color vision, no cones at all. that is pretty lousy.)

what I'm referring to here is the general act of drawing color. I don't think it should be seen as something extra.

for example, drawing the color orange. everyone should be able to draw the color orange whenever they want to. it should be ubiquitous. as common as finding a pen or pencil. same with other colors like pink, purple, light blue, yellow, brown, blue, magenta, lighter and darker greens, etc.

except for the color blindness issue, it's like a functional piece of language is missing. the act of writing color to convey information is seen as a novelty rather than the useful tool that it is.

---

BlazeAndBlade posted...

one piece is trash

Well I've certainly never had a better reason to add someone to the Ole ignore list

Sahuagin posted...

argument from ignorance/lack of imagination

I'm not sure you actually understand what words mean.
---

BlazeAndBlade posted...

one piece is trash

No u

---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'm not sure you actually understand what words mean.

hmmm, ok

---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Also, I feel like, if I was ever playing a game where I needed to draw complex maps, AND I needed to diagram 6+ factions, I might just stop drawing it in pen entirely and just switch to MS Paint, which has an ample palette of colors and brush/tip types to choose from.

That's basically how I drew settlement trade route maps for Fallout 4 - opened a world map picture in MS Paint that showed all the settlements, then drew colored lines between them to indicate which settlement was sending traders to where, so I could easily assign jobs once I started weaving a network together.

Some people don't like having to switch between apps while playing a game. Others might be playing a console game instead on PC.

adjl posted...

Using coloured pens to colour-code stuff in an office setting isn't uncommon, which covers most of the potential utility of coloured pencils. You get more shades with coloured pencils, but professional settings usually call for higher contrast than that (and really, if you need more than 6-7 colours to colour-code your data, colour-coding it probably isn't the most efficient way to organize it), such that you can't use all that many colours anyway. Toss in that best practice dictates that professional documents should remain legible even if they're photocopied or faxed in black and white, and there just isn't that much actual need for coloured pencils.

Most offices would be using highlighters or sharpies in that case.
---

I was just the teasing; pencil crayons are rather useful

---