Caran d'Ache Supracolor Soft Watersoluble Colored Pencils

30 color tin of Caran d'Ache Supracolor Soft watercolor pencils.

I love these watercolor pencils. I've loved them ever since I got a handful of random colored pencils from a friend that included the stub of a red one. The core is soft, like Prismacolor Premier or Derwent Coloursoft - extremely soft and opaque, a lovely texture for dry work as colored pencils. They dissolve fast and easily, much like Derwent Watercolour or Prismacolor Watercolor. They are much more expensive, running to the high end for watercolor pencils. But then, this is Caran d'Ache. I've come to expect insanely high quality and a price range up at the top. You get what you pay for. I finally got these in a set that's a good size for travel and outdoor sketching.

30 color hinged tin open, showing all 30 pencils in spectrum order. 

The nice thing is that the way they've done the colors, I could have settled for a 12 color set and been assured of a good range to render anything I came across. I just wanted the convenience colors this set includes, the choice of grays and greens and violets helps me a lot. 

The tin is a nice tin. It's hinged, none of this tin lid skittering across the table under a kitten problem. It's a little more convenient and the styrene tray in the tin fits well. That used to be a problem in some tins when pencils would jump out of their tray to bang together and get internal breakage. The tin's well made and will work well for permanent storage. I tend to put a bit of tape on tin lids if I'm going to put them vertically into a portfolio or bag, because if they fall open it's annoying having to fish all the pencils out of the bottom. Not to mention they get internal breakage banging into things.

I did not sacrifice a pencil to testing for proneness to internal breakage. I'm not quite that dedicated and these are lovely pencils. Instead, I trust that anything as soft as Prismacolors is going to be at risk if not handled gently and treat them accordingly. I've got my set in a Niji pencil roll now for portability and usually use those or Global Classic pencil cases for colored pencils - anything with an elastic band holder is the safest thing for expensive artist grade colored pencils and watersolubles.

Once I got these pencils into my eager hands, I couldn't resist trying them. I wanted to see how well they'd handle on watercolor paper. So, out with my Pocket Moleskine Watercolor Journal...

Purple violas with gold-orange centers on blue-green foliage painted in watercolor pencil.

The first thing I painted was a bright, high saturation group of three purple violas on very bright green foliage. All of the greens in the 30 color set are strong and saturated, proceeding from a deep blue-green to a very light yellow green. This is great, if I'd wanted to mute them it would've been easy to glaze over with orange or brown or red. I prefer strong mixing colors to the lack of intense saturated colors when I need something saturated. 

They are intense. Color doesn't shift much at all between wet and dry, unlike Derwent Inktense and some other watercolor pencils. It stays intense and powerful. The wash is strong, a little goes a long way and color can easily be pulled out of heavy applications to spread into lighter ones. They handle beautifully. Laydown is easy and they feel responsive in my hand. 

It was a little startling getting used to the narrow hexagonal shape, since so many good artist grade colored pencils are oversize or round. The hex shape felt like using a 2B but the softness is more like a 6B regardless of color. Once I was using them, that translated to speed of coverage. 

Horse with gold body, dark brown mane and tail, wearing a halter. Drawn and washed.

There's a sketch and wash life drawing of a horse I did while I was out. They were very responsive for sketching, soft and smudgy. It was easy to correct the sketch with a kneaded eraser too and work back into it for texture. I deliberately kept the wash light to keep some linear elements in the final version, but it works well to get all the marks out as I did in some areas on Violas.

Pine Cone and Gum Ball sketched with Supracolor Soft

The sketch and wash style is a little easier to see in my journal page with the pine cone and gum ball. There I used more of the neutral colors and only lightly went into them with brighter colors on the pine cone. It worked well. I got beautiful nuances of color and value and managed in some areas to wash out all of the line elements, then restore them as strokes of the brush. I went for a much heavier application on that and layered more.

Crumbling castle in a weedy countryside under cloudy blue sky, effect is more watercolor.

In my last sample, I went for more transparent effects and moved color around more. I used color on the brush to create little patches and glazes, dark streaks and edges in this and that. I wanted to see how close I could come to traditional watercolor with it and that worked out very well. Some marks remain for texture but most of them are washed out. The shifting colors on the tower itself were created in layers of very light dry applications and then washed together.

They do rewet easily. In the castle painting I lightened several areas by lifting and moved color from one patch to another. I worked over the road shadows a lot, shoving color around and lightening it. They are very, very workable. Opposite of the Derwent Inktense that will dry waterproof if completely dissolved. This makes these a good choice for scribbling patches in a journal cover to add color to sketches too. That's a useful trick when you want minimal kit but like having color available.

The full range is 120 colors and I do plan to get the full range set eventually when I've got studio space. That's one that should be spread out in the studio and used often. The palette in the smaller sets is well designed for mixing though, it's got warm and cool primaries and strong mixing secondaries. The white is reasonably opaque, about like Chinese White watercolor.

Overall, these are high performance, very pigment rich and soft watercolor pencils. They're worth the money. Watch for sales or coupons, check prices at different outlets, snap them up if you see them at a good price. Like the rest of my Caran d'Ache products, they're extremely high quality and have become favorites already. I trust them to be more lightfast than the Prismacolor Watercolor.