Mary, I use watercolor pencils quite often and love my Albrecht Dürers! However, as a money-saving tip, there is another brand which is just as good, but not as pricey. Have a look at Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth "Mondeluz"!

Mondeluz are as soft, if not softer than Dürers, and dissolve just as evenly. The leads are slightly thinner, so are the pencils themselves. They're more in line with standard pencils. 72 colors available, also open stock.

Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth is a Czech company as old and reputable as Faber-Castell. They also make other phantastic art supplies, most notably their "Polycolor" pencils (comparable to FC Polychromos) and Toison d'Or soft pastels.

Here is a hack for your Dürers which I wrote about a while back. I improves the look and feel of your wet pencil work.

I suggest you go buy a small quantity, a few ounces, of gum arabic for watercolor. You can get it at art supply stores for a few bucks. While you're at the art store, buy one of those cheap plastic palette trays and get some sandpaper, 100 grit or so. Use the sandpaper to roughen up the plastic palette tray - the rougher, the better. Wash off the plastic dust thoroughly. Finally, make a 100:1 mix of water with gum arabic, i.e. fill a small bottle with 100 ML water and 1 ML of the gum arabic.

And now for the magic:

Put down 3-5 drops of your gum arabic water on the roughed-up portion of the palette. An eye-dropper comes in handy for this. Take one of your watercolor pencils and rub it through this little puddle until you get a nicely saturated paint blob. Then pick up some with a brush and paint!

On proper watercolor paper this mixture will behave exactly like the most expensive watercolor from a tube, and look almost as brilliant. After drying, the only difference will be a very slight haze from the wax of the pencil lead, but this is hardly noticeable and certainly not objectionable. As long as you use top quality watercolor pencils you won't have to worry about the lightfastness, either.

Naturally, you can also use the mixture to activate watercolor pencil on paper.

Happy painting!