1. Woodless Colored Pencils
Imagine a pencil that is made entirely of graphite or the color part of a colored pencil, coated with a faint shell of lacquer that keeps the color from getting all over your fingers. And there you have it - Woodless Colored Pencils.
These pencils work like any colored pencil except you can both shade and draw with the same tool.
Also, being all color and no wood, these pencils have a nice heft to them. They feel almost as heavy as the Apple Pencil.
Recommended Brand: Progresso Woodless Colored Pencil
2. Pastel Pencils
Most of the frustration of using traditional pastels comes from either colors getting muddy and gray, or, from the blunt, blocky tips of pastels. What happens with pastels is that young artists see Degas oil pastel ballerinas, so, they go to the art store, get the oil pastels, and find that the oil pastel experience is like trying to draw a Degas ballerina with the edge of an old chapstick tube.
Pastel pencils take care of this issue by sharpening pastels to a fine point, and keeping the creamy pastel encased in a tough shell. You'll feel like you are wasting less of the pastel, too. If you've tried tube pastels and they are too unrefined for you, these new wood-encased pastels are the perfect solution. They're a bit rare, but once you do find them, they last.
Recommended Brand: Derwent Pastel Pencil
3. Prismacolor NuPastel
They're pastels... they're new ... their NuPastels. Just kidding - these pastels deliver excellent pigment to paper and canvas. Similar to the woodless colored pencils and pastel pencils, NuPastels are less of a mess. NuPastels seem to know when they are hitting paper and when they are in hand, leaving hands less messy and less prone to accidentally smearing artwork.
The black NuPastel can create charcoal-like effects even though it is definitely not charcoal. It feels a bit like drawing on paper with eyeliner - it's more creamy than dry, which is a good feeling if you just can't stand the scraping of charcoal.
More info here: http://www.prismacolor.com/products/pastels/nupastels
Nupastel and woodless graphite on watercolor paper