When I set out to color one of my Mandala Monday designs, I decided that I wanted it to be all shades of one color.

Blue seemed fun, so I chose that.  I colored the same mandala in a blue color scheme in both traditional colored pencils and digitally using my Procreate app.  You can see the Procreate digitally colored version here.

Of course, it takes a lot longer to color with traditional pencils than it does with a digital program where you can drag and drop large blocks of color.  But I’ve always enjoyed coloring, even in my teens and 20’s.  I loved it so much that my parents bought me a set of Prismacolor Art Pencils as a Christmas present one year while I was still in high school.

I have no idea how much my parents paid for those pencils, but they are still with me after all these years.  Some have gotten a lot of use and are now short, stubby pencils, and some still haven’t even been used.  I’ve thought about buying a new set, but dang,  those suckers are expensive!

I can’t even find a 120 pencil set, which is what I have.  But a set with 150 Prismacolor pencils is $100 or more on Amazon, and I’ve seen them for even more than that in brick and mortar stores.

Pencils aside, I had a lot of fun coloring.  I like the colored pencil version more than the digital version.  I think because you can see the variations in color and texture in the pencil version.

What do you think?  Which version do you prefer?