Masters Water-Soluble Pastel Sticks

Masters Water-Soluble Pastel Sticks are a new product in an old category - semi-hard pastels. It's a little bit of a marketing trick that these inexpensive hard pastels are advertised as water-soluble when many brands of dry pastels are water soluble. Cretacolor Pastels Carre' are also watersoluble, Sennelier pastels are water soluble and most pastels will respond well to a water or alcohol wash in the first block-in layers of a pastel painting.

What these Masters Pastels offer for a beginner is decent quality, manufacturer's claim of lightfastness and water washability at a loony low price. Available in sets of 24 and 48, Jerry's Artarama carries these inexpensive hard pastels. The sticks are short compared to most brands, 2 3/8" rectangular sticks 1/4" wide. They look thick because they're so short, but they're a standard width. The 48 color set I bought to test was only $10.99 on sale at Jerry's.

Getting a big range for a low price is an important factor for beginners. If I was kitting up a student, these beat even the other low priced brands for getting more colors at less initial outlay. Their texture is very firm, there's a good range of darks, neutrals, skin tones and brights but very few tints or light colors. The white is going to wear down very fast and there's no ivory in the set, so I would supplement it with a Cretacolor Pastels Carre' white and perhaps an Ivory for lightening when you don't want to cool the underlying color.

One of the other ways the manufacturer cut prices is with inexpensive yet effective packaging. The box is unbleached, uncolored heavy cardboard, designed so that each piece has an indent on two sides. That makes it easy to lift out the top tray to get at the bottom 24 colors. There's a 1/8" thick pad of dense foam over the top tray and a sheet of wax paper over the second tray to keep the pastels clean and reduce dust migrating into other colors. The sticks are packed into thick dense slotted foam inside thin black cardboard trays. A heavy cardboard lid goes over the top, then a thin cardboard sleeve goes over the box to keep the lid from flying off.

By spending less on printing and colored pictures, the company's focused most of its resources on producing a decent product in a 6" square box sturdy enough to survive being knocked around in a backpack. I appreciate cost cutting that doesn't hurt quality and packaging that's usable in rough conditions for the life of the product.

I tested these over a washed Inktense underpainting. I was very pleased with how they performed. Similar to other hard pastels, they have a firm texture, blend well and mix easily once blended with fingers or sticks.



Of course that didn't tell me much about the product's big claim - that these sticks are water soluble. I decided to see how well they'd dissolve with another pears study. I deliberately scribbled loosely with distinct marks to see how well a good scrubbing would dissolve those marks.



So far, so good. They went on well over bare paper with good strong color. If I pressed hard I got strong distinct marks, just dragging the sticks lightly over the rough cream paper of my Stillman & Birn Delta journal produced good broken color.

Using a water brush, I scrubbed hard at all the marks, swirling the water around to dissolve everything as well as I could. I was happy with the results. Washing the Masters Pastels is as easy as washing any other water soluble pastel. They dissolve easily and didn't leave irritating specks of undissolved pastel or deep marks that didn't come up. If I wanted a lighter sketch and wash technique I would have to wash carefully to leave linear marks or redefine them by drawing into the wet area.



Then I finished my test painting working over the washed pears and background with the same Masters pastels. Just as with the Inktense underpainting, they covered easily and blended well. This time instead of the finger blending I used in some areas of the first test, I blended the background and pink covered table with the white stick to lighten my earlier scribbled marks. I used some complementary colors to tone the russet pear and the very bright green pear, mixing a mid-green with the lemon yellow to get the light yellow-green that wasn't in the set.

They do mix well enough to make up for any essential hues not in the set. There's no peach skin highlight stick, but white over any of the sanguine or russet colors will give a good skin highlight. Stick-blending and finger blending both work well. Colors are reasonably opaque, responding like other semi-hard and hard pastels.



My conclusion: Masters Water-Soluble Pastel Sticks are a good starter set for anyone thinking of trying soft pastels. These plus a 64 color Mungyo Gallery Standard Half-Sticks set will give a beginner a good range of colors plus a combination of firm and soft textures. When the paper tooth fills, switch to the Standard Half Sticks to add final details and accents. Working soft over hard extends how many layers you can use on non-sanded paper.

When you're ready to move up to using sanded and coated pastel papers and surfaces, consider buying a more expensive range of semi-hard pastels such as Mungyo, Richeson, Cretacolor, Sanford NuPastel or even the wonderful but expensive Faber-Castell Polychromos. However, even experts may benefit from having cheap and copious sketch supplies at a loony cheap price. There's something inspiring about not having to worry about cost even if you have to replace the whole set to get an extra white. It's easy to let yourself go and play like a kid.

Ebony Splendor Brushes and Derwent App

One of the most useful items in the big box of review products Jerry's Artarama sent me is a seven piece set of Ebony Splendor multi media brushes. What I tried is the Brights set, but other sets are available - Filbert, Rounds with both long and short handle sets and Wash brushes with short handles. Prices for the sets range from $19.99 to $24.99 but these are a frequent sale item. Watch for bargains up to 50% off on individual brushes or sets in this series.

These are true multi-media workhorses. I used mine with gouache, acrylics and watercolor. It doesn't matter what consistency of paint I'm using. They're soft enough for watercolor and strong enough to shove around full body acrylics. You'll get more bristle texture from a stiffer nylon brush if you want them to look more like oils, but the multi-filament structure of these brushes stood up to my tests for use with both thin bodied and heavy body paints.

When I first opened up the package, my 32 year old daughter was thrilled with this brush set. I'm ordering another set because she definitely put these on her Christmas list, especially once I opened it and we tried them with watercolors and acrylics. I want the long handled round set and the Wash Set because these are such good quality that I feel a need to expand my range.

Below is a gouache painting I did using the smaller Brights. The smallest two sizes are good miniature brushes with excellent shaping and razor edges. The size 2 looks a little more than 1/16th inch wide - more like 3/32", definitely smaller than 1/8" and still a perfectly shaped small bright. The next up size is about 1/8" and so on up the line. The biggest is a convenient 7/8" bright, one that I reach for every time I look to wet the paper or lay in a big wash.

In painting, it helps to use the largest brush you can for the area or layer you're doing. The size range in these seven brush sets is excellent for that. I can work to any size in my comfort zone. Wash brushes are 1/2", 3/4" and 1" sizes.

The wooden handles are varnished with a mtransparent burgundy finish, very distinctive, with black dipped ends. They're not scraper ends but work well enough as scrapers with how thick the black enamel is at the end, easy to wipe paint off if you use them to sign or carve lines into the paint. The grip is pleasingly shaped, though of course the handles have gradated sizes and the big giant brush is a bit wide.

I'm fond of good synthetic brushes. These may not be "the butt hairs of an exotic male weasel caught in winter" as my daughter teases me about Kolinsky brushes, but they are reasonably priced and perform beautifully.

Right now these excellent brushes are half price - $9.99 for the $19.99 sets and $11.99 for the $24.99 sets. So if you miss this sale, watch for it again. They're definitely a high quality workhorse brush. You may want to get both the long and short handle sets though, because acrylic use over time wears out brushes differently than watercolor does and if you use any of them with oils, you won't want to use that brush again with watermedia. Grabbing a lot of them on sale is a good way to get around the demands of different mediums and always have the size and shape you need.

I did not test my Ebony Splendor brushes to destruction by letting acrylic dry in the hairs. By previous experience, you can sometimes revive a gunked up brush using a good brush cleaner/conditioner soap or dishwashing liquid. But it's much better to keep them wet while they're in use and rinse them immediately with the solvent for whatever paint you're using.

They've definitely become my favorite brights. While I do finger-shape them after washing, they dry perfectly into their original shape rather than splaying out the way some natural hair brushes do when they're dry. Some sophisticated technology went into creating the mix of synthetic hairs in these brushes.

They may not last as long as a Kolinsky sable, but there are uses for old battered fuzzy brushes too. I'll add notes on their condition when they start wearing out for a home test of longevity, but so far they survived their first few months of use in pristine condition. I do use The Masters' Brush Cleaner/Conditioner on all of my brushes, synthetic or natural, so this is qualified by "when well cared for."

Any brush, if you leave it hairs end down in a jar of water, will get hopelessly mashed and bent. Even the best brushes don't survive that treatment and having gobs of dried oils or acrylic sticking the hairs together is another brush-killer. These are strong for synthetic brushes and some of my other synthetics have showed wear under the same number of uses I've put these through. Definitely a bargain for a high quality synthetic brush, especially when they're on sale. Stock up on them to always have the size and shape you need for thick or thin bodied paint.

I also recently got an iPhone4. Not the latest-best 4S but the previous latest-best that's now half price. Of course I got some drawing apps for it that I'll review in a later article after I've learned to use the new medium. I'm reviewing the Derwent App first though, because I am so fond of Derwent's products and it's so darn convenient for checking up on them.

It's got Hints and Tips videos and articles embedded in it, plenty of the sorts of fun things you can find online at Derwent's site.

Easy to navigate, it includes a bar code reader so that the unidentified black pencil that still has its sticker on it and says Derwent, you can find out what it is and what it does, whether it's lightfast, which range it is and get some hints and tips on using it easily. Very useful if you're at a store, see some colorful new product from Derwent and want to find out a lot more about it using your phone than the display tells you.

The lightfastness charts and color charts arrows direct you to the Derwent site, which you can read if you double tap the screen to zoom in to a comfortable reading size. So it's not a big library of information right within your phone if you're not online, however you can copy these charts and turn it into one if you like. The videos link to YouTube.

It's a fun little app that puts the Derwent site into your hands for convenience without having to type the link in. Also you can add your art to your personal Gallery using the app, or contribute it to the Global Gallery, surf around and see others' artwork done with Derwent products.

It's free, it's fun and easy to use, so definitely worth a download if you like using Derwent's products. Just watch your data plan usage for the videos, see if you can download them rather than watch them repeatedly on streaming.

Stillman and Birn Epsilon Sketchbook

Stillman & Birn's Epsilon Sketchbook is another elegant hardcover artist's journal with fine white 100lb heavy archival paper. It's designed primarily for pen drawing with a smooth plate surface that gives a clean line.

Light washes aren't recommended. For light washes I'd recommend the Alpha or Gamma sketchbooks. For heavy washes and other wet mediums including acrylics and gouache the super heavy 180lb Beta or Delta sketchbook papers. Epsilon is a specialty book designed for fine pen drawing.

So naturally I tried it with a different dry medium to see how well it accepts hard pastels. I love using hard pastels or Conte crayons for sketching. My concern was that the plate surface wouldn't be able to handle pencil or sketching crayons because it's so smooth.

Not a problem. It may be a smooth plate surface but it has loads of tooth to accept dry smudging mediums. I used Derwent pastels on the Epsilon paper with great results sketching my cat from life. Given how well the pastels performed, graphite or colored pencils should go well on this paper. Use a light hand with colored pencils so that you don't fill the tooth too early if you're going to build up multiple layers of color.



Of course a sketchbook designed for pen drawing needs to perform well with a technical pen. I got out my favorite Pigma Micron size 05 and did some quick sketches of my cat, one more detailed and one fast gesture. Using loose lines and deliberately sketching with a lift, I got a bit of broken line. That was my technique though, rather than a quality of the paper. When I slowed down I got smooth clean lines.

The paper surface is perfect for technical pens. Fast or slow, pen lines lay down with smooth edges and don't bleed through. The natural white color is great for lines showing up and would respond just as well to color pen drawing.



Then I tortured the paper with Tombow Dual Tip Brush Pens. These are more like markers than pens. They're water based and very juicy. I layered color. I used the colorless blender pen to pull out soft edges in some areas.

When I put a third or fourth layer of color and blended with a heavy stroke, the paper surface came up a little and pilled. I was able to carefully pull those "pills" off with the colorless blender pen though and save this drawing of a wood duck. It was a slight effect easily repaired rather than a major problem.

Best of all, the very wet Tombow Brush pen marks did not soak through to the back of the page. This wood duck was on the other side of the Pigma Micron cat sketches before I drew or scanned them. There isn't a trace of color or darkening on the cat side of the page even though I rubbed the surface off in a couple of deep color areas.

The manufacturer doesn't recommend using markers on this paper, but if you're careful you may be able to make them perform on it. Just don't do much blending or layering as the moisture may start to weaken the paper surface. Other sorts of pens are fine, like the Pitt Artist Pens with their smaller brush tips.

The surface erases easily, so if you prefer to pencil sketch under your pen drawings there's no problem removing light or medium pencil lines. It's possible to make pencil lines so dark they won't come up, but on this paper I had no problem removing the pencil lines I tested - they didn't groove the surface. Colored pencil may or may not be erasable, it depends on how lightly you colored and how much patience you have with a kneaded eraser. If you'd like to erase color, use Col-Erase pencils.

Thumbs up on a beautiful, archival pen drawing sketchbook. I'm going to have a lot of fun with this one exploring different styles of pen work and may even color some of my pen drawings with my Tombow brush tips.



What I like best about all of these Stillman & Birn sketchbooks is that they're archival. I love looking at sketches by great artists of the past and have an idea that my grandkids and their kids may be interested in Grandpa's sketchbooks too. More than that, when I go back to old sketchbooks I find good ideas that I may not have had the skill to render at the time. They're well protected in sturdy hard covers whether wirebound or hard cover so they survive being knocked around in messenger bags, kicked off the table by my cat or tripped on in the dark. The quality is excellent and prices are comparable to other high quality archival sketchbooks.

I've got two more to test and describe. With how well these three performed, I'm looking forward to the others with delight!

Faber-Castell Polychromos Colored Pencils

Faber-Castell created the Polychromos System, matching colors on their hard pastels, colored pencils and Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils for ease in using their products together on mixed media. Polychromos colored pencils are medium-soft, nowhere near as smudgy and easily blended as Prismacolor or Coloursoft, but much softer than student grade colored pencils. They're pigment-rich and have a slight slippery feel on the paper, blending well with firm pressure. Unlike wax-based colored pencils, they aren't subject to wax bloom.

I bought the 120 color full range tin, you can see half of the range in the Global Classic leather case that I keep it in. The pencils are enameled all the way down with a little gold band near the dipped ends. They're round, but narrow enough to use a standard sharpener and will hold a very fine point well, just like Prismacolor Verithin. I think they are more pigmented than Verithin and find them more opaque. Not quite as opaque as Coloursoft, but more than many artist grade brands.

Another great advantage of the Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils is that they are all labeled for lightfastness. Everything in the range has either * for lightfast, ** for good lightfastness or *** for excellent lightfastness. If you're looking for a large set and concerned about archival quality, Polychromos is a good choice. Price is about mid-range for a good artist grade colored pencil.

The full color 120 pencil tin also comes with a CD of art instruction that is the same CD for all the Polychromos products. It includes a tutorial on using colored pencils, on mixed media, on watercolor pencils and on pastels in a variety of language. The techniques in the tutorial are more impressionist than the fine-detail colored pencils realism that's so popular, but very striking and I found the tutorial useful.

These pencils work well on colored papers like Canson Mi-Tientes smooth side, just translucent enough for the paper color to affect the whole but opaque enough that complements can be brought to full brightness on it. Many of the examples in the DVD tutorial were done on tinted paper in strong colors.

Like Derwent Artist's colored pencils, Faber-Castell Polychromos are very good for a tonal drawing that uses the white specks of the paper for shading. They will hold a fine point and with heavy pressure can be used to incise a fine line to work lightly over with softer pencils or with lighter pressure and darker Polychromos pencils. Their medium softness gives them versatility allowing both hard-pencil techniques and soft-pencil techniques to work equally well and strong pigment makes them very good for opaque passages and pure color when needed.

Faber-Castell Polychromos will blend well with odorless mineral spirits, Bestine rubber cement thinner and turpentine substitutes for wash effects. I prefer using them on fine-grained papers with a vellum or toothy surface. Stonehenge is great with them, but smooth side Canson mi-Tientes is also good and I've had good results with sketchbook paper which I think is similar to cartridge paper in tooth and surface.

The color range is strong on brights and seems to relate to a designer's range, there are many even hue divisions around the spectrum, red-oranges and blue-greens and blue-violets one step farther along the range. It's evenly divided around the spectrum with a lot of yellows, oranges and reds. There are a few useful tints, pinks and light blues, but no extra-light tints in the range. For extra-light tints, go lightly and burnish with white.

The earth tones range is beautiful. Cool blue-grays, warm grays and nearly brown French grays each have several values, then there's a nice variety of yellowish, reddish, pinkish and dark browns. They include a couple of skin-tone highlight colors and ever-useful Cream. Greens include some muted hues, gray-greens and olives as well as spectrum bright greens. Deep darks are represented around the spectrum if you consider several shades of yellow ochre as the dark range of yellow.

The large range with its emphasis on spectrum brights demands a little knowledge of color, mixing and creating values by pressure. It has fewer convenience colors than other large ranges, what it has is pure tertiary hues with high intensity. For someone who loves to mix colors, this set is a joy. You can always mute a color by adding a little of its complement or near-complement, but you can never mix a color as bright as starting with a pencil that hue -- and if you need exactly that yellow-orange for a detail in a flower center, that's a convenience too.

If you're a beginner, the Faber-Castell Polychromos large set will teach color mixing and tonal value adjustments. The pencils respond beautifully to any degree of pressure, laying down well with feather-light touches for a dry glaze that barely changes the color of the paper and burnishing several layers with a heavy application or incising lines with a very sharp point to work around. For an intermediate to expert colored pencil artist, these are good archival oil-based colored pencils that may have exactly the right texture for your hand and your style.

Try a few of them from open stock or a small set of 12 or 24 before investing in the big set. All of the artist grade brands that have a 120 color range are good in their own ways for different styles. Polychromos is one of the most versatile -- if you learn to mix colors and use light pressure and white burnishing to create pale tints.

Here's an example of a drawing I did with Faber-Castell Polychromos, done from life on white sketchbook paper for a Scavenger Hunt event on http://www.wetcanvas.com. I used a soft tonal layer for the shadow of the brush and two or three layers of blended golds and browns for the brass, the black part of the handle is done with black, dark blue, dark green, dark red and a couple of cool grays under the highlights. The fine points gave me beautiful precision for the lines in the brush head and tiny details along the handle. I love these pencils but they may not be for everyone, so try a few before buying the big set.


Travel Brush
4" x 7"
Faber-Castell Polychromos on white sketchbook paper, from life.

Derwent Graphitints

Derwent Fortnight #8: Graphitint pencils

Derwent Graphitint tinted graphite pencils are another Derwent innovation. They're sketch and wash pencils with a 4B softness. These fat 10mm round pencils with 4mm cores are very rich and soft, perfect for sketching. They have a touch of color used dry but when washed, the color becomes more intense.

Even washed, the colors are still softer and muted compared to watercolor pencils. But they have a unique silvery sheen from the graphite that gives an eerie quality to any painting done with them. Available in sets of 6, 12 or 24, they have been an important part of my sketching arsenal since 2005 when I first bought mine.

There is only one comparable product, it's Australian. Mont Marte, an Australian company with a wide range of student and some artist grade products, came out with Earth Tones pencils in a range of 12. I know of nothing else anywhere that's like these and I prefer the Derwent Graphitint for their greater softness.

One discovery I made with these the first time I used them is that if I draw a spooky subject, it will gain immense power from that silvery graphite sheen. It'll look spookier done in Graphitints than anything else. That eerie quality lends itself to mystical or nature subjects too.

The white pencil has no graphite in it, but everything else does. It's just as soft as the darker ones, so when you're sketching on dark or tinted grounds this makes a good white sketch and wash pencil. Accents sketched over other colors come up well too, it's reasonably opaque and a good lightener.

Combining dry and wet techniques in the same piece can give a lovely contrast, since the washed areas have stronger color. Some artists prefer not to use intense, saturated color and enjoy a more muted palette for sketching.

Derwent Graphitints have an enormous value range in most colors. They blend well and handle like the softest sketching pencils used dry, but the hint of color allows the artist to use aerial recession, use complements for intensity and all the other color tricks without losing that sense of it being a sketch. Any of them would make good monochrome colors, but I prefer the blues since I've got a soft spot for blue monochrome drawings.

Not all the colors are lightfast. Derwent's home page lists the lightfastness by Blue Wool scale for each of the colors in the set. Choose accordingly depending on whether you're doing a serious drawing or painting to frame and exhibit or filling your sketchbook with field drawings and quick color notes from life.

Lightfastness isn't a major issue for sketchbook work. I realized that some time ago and organize my pencils by whether to keep them to the sketchbook or use them for paintings to frame.

Anything that's kept in a closed sketchbook with opaque covers and layers of other drawings protecting it has a good chance of lasting for years even with a fugitive pigment. I understood this when I looked at some medieval books of hours and the brilliant colors in their illustrations, when the same colors in paintings had faded and discolored till they were sometimes absent.

Graphitints shine both for serious pencil drawing to give subtle color variations and for sketchbook use. The 4B softness invites gestures, quick sketching, smudging with a stump, tortillon or finger. Brighter washes can add emphasis where you want them or they can be used for eerie, muted paintings in a watercolor journal or painting.

Port, Juniper, Aubergine, Dark Indigo and Storm are the sketchbook-only colors that rate lower than 6 on the Blue Wool scale. My favorite blue, Ocean Blue, has a rating of 7 which is between "lightfast" and "best lightfastness."

The tin is heavy, sturdy, well made and fits the pencils nicely. They don't all roll to the bottom if it's turned on its side and the lid snaps on well. I'd put a rubber band around it if sticking it in a backpack or messenger bag.

Despite their softness, I've had no trouble with internal breakage on any of my Derwent Graphitints. As with all fine art pencils, I use a sharp fresh pencil sharpener blade when sharpening them. Use the wide hole on a two-hole sharpener or a General's All-Art sharpener for them, or an electric sharpener that handles wide pencils.

While at first I thought these were fun special effects pencils, I started using them more and more. Since I bought the set, a good third to half of my sketches and value drawings are done with Graphitints because I love their softness, hint of color and smooth laydown. They erase exactly like 4B graphite. They shade like 4B graphite. They're top quality 4B graphite sketch and wash pencils that also have a color range, and that becomes irresistible when I'm doing value sketches.

Below is an example drawing I did on hot press watercolor paper. I used three techniques -- washed the sky very heavily over a smooth tonal layer to dissolve to a smooth wash, then washed lightly over stronger marks on the row of bare trees and the pine at the bottom. I let that dry and finished with the almost silhouetted large tree to show how the contrast of textures works so well in a sketch.


Cloudy Day
4" x 6"
Derwent Graphitint pencils
Hot press 140lb Lanaquarelle watercolor paper.

Derwent Tinted Charcoal Pencils

Derwent Fortnight #7: Tinted Charcoal Pencils

When I discovered these new Derwent specialty pencils on the Derwent home page, I couldn't wait for Col Art to bring them to my USA art suppliers. I'd already tried Derwent Graphitints and thought they'd be something similar, only charcoal pencils. Finally, I found a supplier that had the full 24 color range and ordered them.

These are unique. Nothing else like them is available from any art supply manufacturer. They are typical of Derwent's wicked inventions intended to get me ordering more must-have pencils when I've already got lots: they fill a gap in my supplies and add to my range of possibilities for sketching. Used dry, they were exactly what I expected.

Charcoal pencils, with a nice firm smooth soft compressed-charcoal texture and a bit of a tint. Not much, the tints are very subtle and most of the colors are soft. The color shows up most in light applications and especially in smudging. But blending and smudging are one of the great techniques for charcoal. Charcoal pencils have a stronger value range than other types of sketching materials.

They're dynamic, quick, shade easily whether by hatching, use of a tortillon, light marks or finger smudging. Any sort of pastel blender will work to blend these charcoal pencils, they have that lovely dry powdery texture that gives strong intense darks and delicate muted lights.

The full range set includes a good white charcoal pencil and three degrees of softness in black charcoal pencils, plus several gorgeous light colors that fall into what I'd call a medium value range in pastels and a long range of thrillingly varied darks. If you use these in conjunction with pastel pencils, you can extend the dark range around the spectrum and produce sparkling varied shadows. Details that stay within the hue and temperature of what you're accenting or complement it are another great use for these pencils, as accent darks.

They are watersoluble. That's where the comparison with Graphitints vanishes. Unlike the Derwent Graphitint range of soft dark tinted graphite pencils, Derwent Tinted Charcoal pencils do not brighten or intensify the color when washed. They retain their original colors perfectly.

It's useful to know how any watersoluble product shifts when washed. So before using them in paintings, do a color chart and wash half the sample of each color. Each of the dark colors is a wonderful deep monotone with a long value range, even the light colors have a good value range other than white, which has a long value range on dark or black paper.

These are perfect for multimedia techniques in dry media, they handle like charcoal. Their great advantage is that whisper of color. It can be used to great advantage in nature sketching, where you may need cool winter shadows on snow or tawny golds and browns in a deer but really want to keep the whole palette muted. Easy smudging makes them a good fast sketching medium, and that's what I mostly use mine for.

You can only get them from Derwent. If you like charcoal pencils, you will probably love these. If you use charcoal pencils for accents in your pastel drawings, you may start finding them a necessity for those times when very deep accent darks look so much better with a hue than without. Use them exactly like other brands of charcoal pencils but enjoy the range of subtle tints for any time you need just a hint of color.

I'll be keeping my set restocked because having these around encourages me to sketch more. Below is my life drawing of the corner of my drawing table with a blue glass coffee cup as the central element. One great advantage of charcoal pencils in general over other sorts of sketching pencils is easy scanning! While light tones in graphite may drop out, charcoal and these tinted charcoal pencils tend to show up clearly in all their tonal gradations.


Coffee Cup
4" x 6"
Derwent Tinted Charcoal Pencils on white ProArt sketchbook paper
From life, blue glass coffee cup on a corner of my drafting table with supplies, edge of the table and drawers under the table.

Derwent Pastels

Derwent Fortnight continues with #5: Pastels.

Derwent Pastels are medium-hard sketching pastels. Comparable to Prismacolor's NuPastel, Color Conte sticks, Cretacolor Pastel Carre, Richeson Semi-Hard or Faber-Castell Polychromos, these pastels are versatile for both painting and sketching. Like the Derwent Pastel Pencils, these pastels have been reformulated for softer, more consistent texture and greater lightfastness in some colors. I haven't got the old formula to compare, but I like these very much and consider them as a probable improvement on NuPastel, which has lightfastness issues.

I loved the NuPastel texture but didn't like the way some very useful colors were fugitive. Derwent hasn't posted lightfastness per color in this range on the Derwent home page yet, but I'm sure they will later on. They post this information for almost all of their products and this formula's new, which may mean Blue Wool testing is still ongoing.

The earth tones blister pack I tested is a great range for life and nature sketching. The reddish earths would make excellent skin tones for figure drawing or portraits, while the cooler browns and deep darks would help with background elements and deep shadows.

I like the example sketches on the package, but that was done with a larger set since it seems to include a pale yellow or ivory color not in the blister pack. Thus any shading to light I did with these had to be using reserved white on the paper. They smudged easily when deliberately pushed, but weren't so delicate that I wound up getting them all over my hands for a completely muddy surface.

Just firm enough to get a clean line or hard detail, they're soft enough to give a good scumbled texture. Several of the sticks had broken neatly in half when I opened it, so that was handy. I used the side of the stick to block in some areas and found that just as effective as using the tip.

Some of my highlights in my test drawing are reserved, others are created by lifting with a kneaded eraser. Derwent Pastels don't stain the paper in any of the colors I used. I was able to bring back pure white in a couple of spots I wanted to remove color, one of them (the hole in one of the dried leaves) had been a dark spot with a heavy application. Spraying with SpectraFix alcohol-casein based fixative did not dissolve the color or change the colors.

Being compressed, the first stroke with a new stick may be a little light and not lay down much color. The solution is just to scribble a bit till the color comes up. If you have scrap pieces of sanded pastel paper or sandpaper, one swipe will take off that outer compressed layer revealing the working core.

They have uniform softness without grit or hard lumps in them. None of the sticks crumbled under hard pressure or on being squeezed, something that happens sometimes with other pastels in vigorous applications. They are nicely pigment-rich and have a texture very close to the American Prismacolor NuPastels.

The range is only 36, but like other short range Derwent products, it's got a good balanced spectrum of brights and some great earth tones. A short range is the only drawback, but then, if you're on a tight budget a smaller set that's good artist grade quality is going to make it a lot more affordable.

I hope that in future Derwent does choose to extend the range to 72 and beyond, since these pastels are wonderful for so many uses. Every application I listed for the color Conte crayons applies to these. You can use them for sketching, sketch under pastel paintings without changing the texture, paint with them from beginning to end or do an underpainting by blocking in large masses of color and then rubbing them smooth to provide a base for softer pastels in later layers.

Corresponding with Dick Blick, I discovered that the current stock is the old formula, somewhat harder Derwent Pastels. The distributor has informed them that this new formula will be available in June or July 2010 and presumably that's when the rest of the USA suppliers will have them. I've written to them for an old formula sample, so I can tell exactly how much softer these new ones are. The texture on these is splendid, consistent and firm without being dry or brittle. If you like the older formula, stock up on them while Blick still has the previous ones. Derwent might also have changed some colors in the range.

Here's the test sketch I did this morning with my six-color earth tones blister pack. I like the palette for nature sketching and feel it'd be glorious for figure drawing. Definitely something to bring along the next time I find a group of artists doing life drawing. All whites and lights are reserved, smudged light applications or erased out -- this range is better for white or light paper unless you accompany it with a white pastel pencil.


Bone and Gall
8 1/2" x 11"
Derwent Pastels (six color earth tones assortment)
White ProArt sketchbook paper
Sketched from life.