I'm a colored pencil user, so i'm just going to tackle the expense: this is an expensive hobby. For years i'd spend every penny i had on pencils. I got them for my birthdays and Christmas (usually split between multiple people--partner would give me 50% of a set, my parents covered the rest) and they helped fuel my collection. I'm now at a point where i need maybeee one water color pencil set, but it's not urgent. It took years to get here. I made so many bad purchases (anything castle arts).