Alvin Ruling Pen and Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons

Ari Cat with White Whiskers

Pen and watercolor with Neocolor II white whiskers

Behold the beauty of my cat's bright white whiskers! I have been trying for over a decade, really the past fifteen years since I got this cat as a six week old kitten, to render his beautiful white whiskers against his dark black mask. White gel pens skipped, stuttered and picked up paint from whatever dark color I pulled them over. White watercolor turned out to be too thin and translucent even applied with a narrow fine brush and once, with a dip pen.

Alvin Ruling Pen in case

approx. 6" long minus loop

Some time ago I bought an Alvin Ruling Pen. I read about this type of pen for making fine lines with an even clean edge. Ordered it from Blick and tucked it in among small things to bring a large order back up to Free Shipping level. I love getting free stuff so when they do a big coupon I'll do that. 

Then it went in a drawer and I forgot it was there, moved to California, never got around to trying it. Recently was looking for something else and found it, so took it out meaning to experiment. Like dip pens it's a little more cumbersome than my Pigma Microns or Pentel Pocket Brush pen. It needs to be filled constantly, per line almost. But the results floored me.

It wasn't that hard to use. I liquefied shavings from the white crayon by dropping water in them in a porcelain palette well and stirred around till I had a nice thick white liquid about like Half & Half for consistency - not quite as watery as ink or watercolor but still definitely liquid. Got a drop of the stuff into the tip of the pen and dared to put a whisker onto my perfect cat portrait which I hadn't reserved any whiskers on.

Caran d'Ache Neocolor II artist crayons set, closed

Wow. It was lovely. Next one skipped a little because the drop was almost used up, but I chalked that up to light hitting it intermittently and accepted it. Started reloading every whisker or two to get it right and finally had the results I wanted.

I chose the white Neocolor II crayon because they were a little more handy than digging out a set of acrylics to use acrylic paint and the same thing applied to white oil paint with the additional hassle of cleaning up after it. I wanted something watersoluble I could clean off the pen whether it worked or not and thin enough to flow like ink, opaque when thinned that far. It was my best guess for opacity at that liquidity and I wasn't wrong.

While my product photos are downloading, I'll give a little history on my Neocolor II crayons. I first bought them on impulse at Dixie Art Supply on Jackson Square in New Orleans when I'd sold a bunch of portraits, made my rent and bills and saw this beautiful set of watersoluble crayons sitting out. They were a little expensive but completely new art supplies. I thought they'd be easier to use than gouache or acrylic with a wet brush and I was right. They are fantastic. So I bought a set of 40, experimented, the paintings didn't sell because they weren't portraits of people's loved ones but I liked the results both wet and dry.

Then I found out that they could be used for face painting. They're pigment rich, non toxic, opaque, easily liquefied and blend wonderful. I started using them with costumes for Mardi Gras and various conventions, found some professional face painters using them and treasured the set for that. Lost them in a move, so years later replaced my set of 40 with the 84 color set. Colors below.

Neocolor II Watersoluble Artist Crayons 84 set open.

Look at that rich variety of earth tones, all those lovely lights and darks. I like having certain colors in my palette for both face paintin and painting. These are lightfast, pigment rich and have a texture a lot like firm oil pastels - very similar to the Caran D'Ache Neopastel oil pastels I reviewed on my oil pastels site. Used as paint by liquefying shavings, they are opaque about like a good gouache but do not have the matte look of gouache.

Instead, the surface is a little waxy and has a bit of shine, less than graphite but more like a latex paint. It's a lovely look in itself. Moreover, a toothy surface for going over it with more dry marks or with oil pastel. Thin them far enough and like gouache they become transparent. Thin them just enough and you can easily lay light over dark with a brush.

I have also tried the similar Cretacolor AquaStic watersoluble oil pastels. I'm not sure why Neocolor II crayons don't get called watersoluble oil pastels, they act just like them and are a step softer and more opaque. I prefer the Neocolor II to the AquaStic product but both are very good and versatile.

These are a far cry from the Crayolas you used as a kid. They are an adult artist material and works done with them either mixed media or by themselves are archival, lightfast, top quality and can be sold with confidence. If your skills are high enough to sell your art, they will easily pay for themselves as a bold, saturated medium with enormous possibilities. My big set is currently $148 at Dick Blick and I've got a small pocket set of 15 in my cart for my next art supply order. They are wonderful for field sketching in the same way watercolor pencils are, sketch and wash is easy with them.

They are extremely cost effective! You can sketch fast on toned paper like Canson Mi-Tientes or just use watercolor paper and tone it with a wash. Wet and dry effects are easily controlled and their bluntness encourages free style looseness. However if you want fine detail they can be sharpened in a pencil sharpener or with a knife that doesn't need to be sharp. That white stick is great for dabbing in an eye highlight if sharpened.

Overall five stars for both products, a great new tool and a wonderful, versatile old friend painting, drawing and sketching medium.

Stillman and Birn Gamma Sketchbook

Stillman & Birn's Gamma Series sketchbook is the fifth of the beautiful journals the company sent me to try. Available in several sizes with either a hard cover or a wirebound hard cover, the Gamma Series has 100lb ivory vellum archival paper. It's a very light ivory, not so dark that white strokes show up dramatically. The color gives a warm glow to anything drawn or painted on it and the heavy weight allows a variety of mixed media uses.

The paper is the same as the Stillman & Birn Alpha Series sketchbook, its only difference is the ivory color. So I decided to test it again thoroughly with different mediums. Seeing how the ivory paper affects color in sketches and trying out a couple of dry mediums I didn't use in the Alpha for my review seemed like a good idea.

I trusted that it'd handle dry mediums well enough when I reviewed the Alpha. What I didn't realize was how great the surface was with them, whether I want broken color or blended smooth color areas. This paper, in both the Alpha and Gamma versions, shines for everything I've used on it.

I love the texture on the Stillman & Birn Gamma paper for drawing with Conte. Here's a sketch done with the traditional sketching colors, black, bistre and sanguine. I worked loosely, smudged, skittered the sticks across the page and got excellent broken color from the vellum surface. It's versatile. Not so toothy that I can't get soft blended edges or even use penwork, yet rough enough that broken color is easy.



I used SpectraFix casein fixative on this page. It's a good idea to use fixative on colored pencils paintings or drawings to prevent wax bloom. With pastels, pastel pencils or Conte drawings, even soft graphite drawings, fixative helps keep them from smearing on the facing page. At worst, smears on the facing page migrate into light areas of the drawing facing it.

For permanent storage, the hard cover Stillman & Birn Gamma sketchbook fits neatly on any bookcase and looks classy with its plain black binding. This is the type of bound sketchbook that gives an art journal a sense of special formality. I know in the past I was nervous about using hardbound sketchbooks at all for fear of messing up a page when it's so elegant.

Don't be afraid to experiment in the Gamma sketchbook. The strong Gamma paper stands up well to erasing and reworking for any dry medium. Any pages you're not satisfied with can always be reworked later or dated to show your progress.

One thing I like about the size is that the 8 1/2" x 11" Gamma sketchbook fits on a normal scanner unlike any of the 9" x 12" ones. That size range varies, but having a scanner sized sketchbook makes it much easier to post your pages online. If you don't have a camera tripod, it can be hard to snap photos of artwork without blurring. So having scanner sized pages makes it a lot easier to keep a digital record in case my sketchbooks are damaged by a flood or lost in a move.

Below is an oil pastel still life in my hardbound Stillman & Birn Gamma sketchbook. Oil pastels are a little different. Unlike Conte crayons, colored pencils or other dry mediums, they have mineral oils in them that never completely dry. Sometimes these oils can seep through sketchbook paper to appear on the reverse.

The strong paper with its sizing kept the oils in my oil pastels page from coming through at all. I could use watercolors on the reverse of this page with no problem. That's important to me because oil pastel is one of my favorite sketch mediums as well as a serious painting medium.

Because the hard covers are light proof, I can even use cheap student oil pastels in my sketchbook without worrying about fading. So I'm always on the lookout for papers that take them well. They're a portable, convenient color medium for studies in their cheapest form and it's a lot of fun to experiment, trusting that the paper will stand up to my experiments.




So if this paper stands up well to oil pastels and Conte crayons, I trust it'll be fine with colored pencils. It's toothy and should take some serious layering if you want to play with your Prismacolors on it. Stick to light applications till your final blending if you want to maximize layering though

Naturally I wanted to see how the Gamma paper holds up to light washes. Except that my example wasn't a light wash by the time I was done with it. I'd call it a heavy wash. I used Stabilo Point 88 fine tip watersoluble pens in a color set that came with my Carb-Othello pastel pencils.

Once I'd sketched the scene using half a dozen colors, I started washing by color area and pushing color around. I scrubbed hard in some areas to almost completely dissolve my pen lines, leaving only faint echoes if that. I dabbed color into damp areas from darker areas for wet in wet effects. What happened was some very slight curling at the edge when it was completely soggy and finished. That flattened out as it dried and the scanner finished flattening it to minimal.

This paper stands up to wet techniques and mixed media so well that I won't hesitate to use watersoluble pencils, watercolor sketching or any water media in it. The label says "light washes" but it stands up to some heavy washing too with minimal cockles. My main suggestion is to leave a bit of space between the edge of your painting and the edge of the paper if you're going to get really soggy, unlike what I just did. I'd rather have left about an inch but by then I had to keep going to get the composition right.

Stillman & Birn Gamma paper will put up with mistakes like that and come back strong. I'm happy with this beautiful sketchbook and know that I'll definitely replace it when it's full - these are a joy to work in and an inducement to sketch and paint more often.