Should I invest in artist level colored pencils?

Question

Admittedly I'm not at a superb level of art yet, I've only really started to get "serious" about it. I'm not planning on drawing for a career or anything its just a hobby. And colored pencils are the medium I feel most comfortable with using. I've been using really cheap ones over the years like crayola and crazy-art but I can still create an interesting looking colors using those, at least I think. I've been a believer that there's no point in buying artist level materials if you can't make decent with something more affordable. This is my latest picture with colored pencils:

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/011/1/0/envy_by_isabellapiano-d4m2s82.jpg

It's not quite finished yet but you get a sense of how I color, this one was done with crazy-art colored pencils.

So am I at a level where it would be good to upgrade? If so which brands? And will it make that much of a difference if I do?

Answer 1

Give them a shot, if you're not comfortable with them then go back to the way you were doing things. The only difference might be, and this is a pretty big might, is that the pigments in the professional level pencils are ground finer. Bill Mauldin, the WWII cartoonist known for his characters Willie and Joe, used to tell a story of starving himself to buy sable paint brushes during his time at the Chicago Institute of Art. Later on, when he became well known, he did his cartoons with chewed up tooth picks.