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!

Mungyo Gallery Artist's Soft Pastels

Mungyo Gallery Soft Pastels are a discount artist grade brand of medium-soft round soft pastels. Don't mistake these for the Mungyo Gallery Square pastels or the cheaper student grade ones - these are artist grade and claim lightfastness even though they use hues for some mineral colors. The range of 200 is available in a wood box set, various set sizes from 12 on up to 200 and open stock colors can be found at Jerry's Artarama and ASW, same as some other brands like Erengi Art Aspirer oil pastels.

Because they are non toxic, these make a good choice for artists who work around small children or pets. This is a tradeoff. Genuine Cadmium and Cobalt pigments have certain working properties, especially in wet mediums, that aren't duplicated by using other pigments - especially in watercolors, acrylic and oil painting, real Cadmiums are far more opaque than their color-matching hues. This isn't necessarily as much of a problem with soft pastels, all have a dusty consistency.

In some of the more expensive brands, you'll find the hardness of the stick will vary with the working properties of the pigments. Sennelier is well known for using as little binder as possible and not even trying to keep the consistency the same between different pigments - the up side is that you get the pigments you chose and learn to use those colors in their unique ways.

For beginners and for anyone who doesn't have a big collection of pastels, that can also get frustrating. Other artist grade brands will use fillers to "even out" the texture of various pigments. Mungyo Gallery Artist's Soft Pastels have a consistent texture across all the sticks, you won't find one so soft you can barely hold the stick and another one almost like a hard pastel or gritty. Pigment load is pretty good. It's not up there with my expensive hand rolled Unison pastels but it's decent, especially for the price.

Hardness is in a category with Rembrandt and Art Spectrum, of that category I think the greatest pigment load can be found in Art Spectrum... along with a number of toxic mineral pigments that are more dangerous to breathe than the non toxic Mungyo Gallery. So when you choose a brand of soft pastels, it's important to balance health concerns, working style, how much protection you want to use while painting, ventilation and feel.

I'd definitely recommend these as a frugal alternative for beginners over any student grade brand. They're soft enough for easy sketching and blending, their medium texture is versatile and the color range is excellent. They are available in open stock, so it's possible to replace colors used in sets, fill out weak color areas in a mixed-brand collection or put together your individual palette choices. That's another important element in whether an art supply is considered artist grade - can you order fifteen Indigo Tint 3 sticks because you're doing a honking big painting with a vast span of Indigo Tint 3 sky, or are you stuck buying them in sets and getting a lot of colors you might not use?

If you, like me, are teaching a talented, underage artist and want to make sure she or he has artist grade supplies, this type of product is the best thing to start them off with. Toxicity may be more dangerous to young people whose bones and bodies are still growing than to adults, also youth are less likely to wear gloves, use barrier creams, make sure they've got adequate ventilation or wear face masks. They want to get down and make a mess painting, even when they're skilled enough you'd think they're adults. So if you're buying these as a gift for an underage pastelist, both the price and their non toxic hues are in favor of Mungyo Gallery Artist's Soft Pastels. These are the round ones.

I haven't tried the Squares. Those are half the price, which to me suggests that they might have twice the filler even though they are listed as lightfast. Those are priced and shaped comparable to Loew Cornell soft pastels, the original Blick student grade soft pastels, Alphacolors and similar products. These round, labeled sticks are much closer to Rembrandt in feel than any other brand I've tried.

The wood box is probably a veneer over sturdy MDF like the Mungyo Semi-Hard set, with a second tray to hold all the colors. I would recommend it as a sturdy box even if it's not the type of solid wood boxes that pricier brands like Winsor & Newton or Sennelier produce - it also doesn't cost as much and the one I have with the Semi-Hard set is just as good for protecting the sticks.

The cardboard box sets are packaged the same way as those 64 clever little Mungyo Gallery half sticks that I love for a sketch set. A sturdy cardboard box has two trays filled with slotted foam and foam padding on top to protect the sticks, then for added protection against the box falling open, it slides into a cardboard sleeve. If you're putting a set on edge inside your backpack for sketching outdoors, that sleeve can be a lot of help! Even if it drops off a shelf, it's less likely to fall open and the sticks are less likely to break with all that padding.

Here's the color range of the 60 color set that I bought. It has a reasonable number of darks and tints for a 60 color range, a good spectrum and good choices in warm and cool neutrals. I used a piece of gray Canson Mi-Tientes for the swatches so the values on the tints would be easier to see. One gray almost precisely matches the paper, but the white shows up very clean and strong, distinct from the tints.



The size of the box on this 60 color cardboard set is pretty convenient, it'd fit in any backpack or messenger bag for outdoor sketching and painting. That may be another good use for Mungyo Gallery Artist soft pastels - because they're not toxic pigments, they may do less damage to the environment when puffs of dust come off your easel. You're not poisoning the squirrels and birds with them or putting Cadmiums into water runoff.

Mungyo Gallery Soft Pastel rounds are often on sale at both Jerry's Artarama and ASW. Watch for sale prices on the sets and on open stock. If you want a lot of colors for a very low budget, give these a try with a small set or a few chosen open stock colors to see how you like them. Some of my friends hated them because both Art Spectrum and Rembrandt beat them for pigment concentration. I enjoyed them and would be very happy to use this set outdoors or over at the farrier school to sketch the horses. Less concern about toxicity balances against the stronger pigment concentration in Rembrandt and Art Spectrum for a medium-soft pastel.

They handled very well on Canson mi-Tientes, either smooth or textured side. They smudge easily, are quite softer than any of my hard pastels and will carry several layers even on unsanded paper.

For best results in soft pastel painting rather than quick sketching, I recommend getting some hard pastels, some medium pastels of this type of hardness and some hand-rolled or super-soft pastels such as Sennelier half sticks, Schminke, Unison or Richeson Hand-Rolled. For a bargain startup, Gallery Semi-Hard, Gallery Artist Soft Pastels (round) and some Richeson Hand-Rolled pastels might make a good initial investment. They're better than student grade, in the artist grade category, but in pastels especially where most of what you're paying for is pigment load versus filler, you'll get what you pay for.

They definitely beat the other super-bargain brand I've invested in - the Yarka Soft Pastels. Mostly on palette. Texture is similar but the Yarka palette has serious gaps especially in pure tone yellows, oranges, reds, violets and strong greens. Yarka's got some good blues and is strong on gradated tints, but often the brightest color in a pigment range is still a mid tint rather than a pure tone. So if you already have some Yarka soft pastels, you might consider filling out the range with full intensity Mungyo Gallery Soft Pastels. They're close enough in texture that they'd play well together and be interchangeable.

Yarka has been recategorized as Student Grade for palette range issues, although the Yarka ones do include genuine Cadmiums and Cobalts. Don't mix them if you're buying these for an underage friend or student, Mungyo Gallery Soft Pastels are better for anyone who may have toxicity issues.

Below is a sketch of my granddaughter's dragon toy as a flying dragon on pale yellow Canson Mi-Tientes, textured side, done with Gallery Mungyo Artist Soft Pastels. These and a pad of Canson mi-Tientes would be a great sketching combination.

Cretacolor Drawing Lead Travel Set

I first noticed the Cretacolor Drawing Lead Travel Set back in 2004 surfing a Jerry's Artarama seasonal catalog. It was on sale for the holidays for about $7.99 or something like that - a plastic lead holder and six 5.6mm fat chunky leads in a little plastic case. Portable, handy, and protected, the color range is pretty similar to a classic Conte stick set with a cool addition - graphite.

The six sticks from left to right are soft 4B graphite, firm compressed Charcoal, Dark Sepia, Light Sepia, Sanguine and White Chalk. The basics for "Trois Couleurs" style sketching on a brown or gray page are all there. Both Sepia sticks have a dry firm feeling a lot like a Conte stick or Polychromos hard pastel. Sanguine is a little different. Waxier, it's an oil based formula that has the texture of a very soft colored pencil. White chalk has the same texture as the compressed charcoal and the Sepia sticks.

The leads are very fat, not like the usual size of graphite leads for a lead holder. The lead holder is accordingly fat and fits nicely into the hand a bit like a marker. It keeps my fingers clean with these powdery, smudgy mediums - even the Sanguine smudges beautifully - and it can all go in a shirt pocket with a pocket Moleskine for sketching.

The leads are in a sturdy, heavy little plastic box with snap-on lid. I'd probably put a rubber band around it or tape the lid down if carrying it vertically, but it has a thin foam pad under and folded over the sticks under the label to keep them from breaking. Very good little leads case, sturdy and dependable. The only thing that would improve on it would be hinges, but those sometimes break off and you're left using a rubber band on a Conte case anyway. This is that same sort of clear heavy plastic as the Conte crayon boxes.

I thought of this set as a redundant whimsy since I have full ranges of soft and hard graphite pencils, plenty of charcoal and Conte crayons for sketching. But I've always been fond of lead holders for their cleanliness and this set did prove to be as convenient as I thought it would be. Bring along a tortillon or stump for smudging though, if you want to take advantage of the holder to keep your hands clean!

I've done three sample sketches in Dark Sepia, Sanguine and Charcoal in the photo and posed the little set with a 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" hardbound sketchbook for scale. You can see how compact this setup is. The lead holder has a four prong clutch grip and opens easily by pressing the top button. Leads slide out for easy replacement.

When they're used up, all the Cretacolor drawing leads are available in boxes of six at Jerry's Artarama. There are a few others: Soft and Medium Negro leads which look darker than graphite and are probably a carbon-graphite mix, Sanguine Dry, which presumably has the same texture as the Sepia colors, 2B and 6B graphite and either a Soft or Medium charcoal, the hardness that wasn't included.

These are just six of the most popular leads and I can see why they are that popular. The oil based Sanguine lead has a great texture in itself and lets you try that texture when the Sepia leads already have the compressed drawing stick texture. These, a kneaded eraser and a sketchbook are great for those moments of inspiration.

Current regular price is $10.83, but the Cretacolor Drawing Lead Travel Set is a perennial sale item. I recommend it to anyone who likes sketching and drawing for its convenience, variety, sturdy packaging and compact size. This might live in the pocket of my Blick canvas sketchbook cover, since it's got everything I need for sketching in a form that'll fit into it neatly.

Cretacolor also has a variety of other sketching sets and kits including the Black Box and the Monolith Black Box, Creativo, Artino and Teacher's Choice sets. Look for the sketching set that suits your habits and budget, they're all high quality supplies and usually in good sturdy tins or cases. Any of them make great gifts.

The Cretacolor Drawing Lead Travel Set is a good gift choice too for a friend who sketches, or as a small gift to self along with a new sketchbook. I'm enjoying it a lot and wondering why I took so long to buy it. This is great.

Derwent Waterbrush

Derwent Sketch Kit gift set included a Derwent waterbrush.

Derwent Fortnight #11: Waterbrush

Derwent has created a waterbrush as good as the original Japanese versions. I first tried a waterbrush when I got one in a Sakura Koi pocket set of watercolors. I loved it for its convenience -- a nylon round watercolor brush with a hollow soft plastic handle. Fill the handle with water and you have convenience.

The brush stays wet. Just touch watercolor pans or tips of watersoluble pencils to pick up color and you can paint. It means not going to the sink to wash out brushes and refill water cups if I'm having a bad day. It means not having to carry a water bottle if I go out and want to sketch in watermedia.

I loved that first one and bought several more in different brands. Unfortunately, some of the brands other than Sakura gave me problems. Water would drip too fast through the brush or not come out without some serious squeezing, the flow would be uneven. One brush lost bristles and went from too little water to too much. They're not always well made.

My original Sakura Koi ones from the small and large pocket sets were perfect, so is the Niji one I tried.

Right up with them is the Derwent waterbrush, with its elegantly shaped reservoir. Derwent redesigned the handle with a graceful curve and a little extra width up near the tip. This does two things. It holds more water and if you set it down on a slanted surface like a drafting table, it won't roll off because the fat bit is flattened. The top snaps neatly onto the back end so it won't get lost, something that I can't always do with some others.

Derwent actually takes top prize for my favorite waterbrush because of that little innovation. None of the rest have the no-roll extra width design. Sakura and Niji come very close with good products that have excellent flow, last a good long time,
and serve the purpose just as well. So there are three brands I'd recommend and Derwent tops the list because of its handle shape.

You can also fill a Derwent waterbrush with solvents such as odorless mineral spirits or Bestine rubber cement thinner. Don't use the same waterbrush for thinners and water, it's like using the same brush for oils and watercolors. Keep one for watermedia and one for thinners. Using a Derwent waterbrush with thinner will let you use your Coloursoft or Artists' or other colored pencils as if they were watersoluble, give you wash effects between layers or to smooth a final layer.

My Derwent Waterbrush came in a Derwent Sketch Kit gift set. I found it on Clearance at Blick, where I think it was one of those nice annual limited-edition gift sets. I bought it to get a dozen spare Graphitint pencils in something like a Global Classic case, and was intrigued by the waterbrush. It included Derwent Watersoluble Sketching Pencils in Light Wash, Medium Wash and Dark Wash as well as three values of Derwent Charcoal Pencils and a dozen Graphitints.

It also has a very nice hardbound sketchbook with perforated pages in case I wanted to rip out a good sketch to give someone.

Derwent Watersoluble Sketching pencils are great. I like watersoluble graphite pencils, they allow me to fill areas in graphite sketches quickly with a wash or to paint a monochrome in pure graphite. Derwent Watersoluble Sketching Pencils come in three degrees of hardness.

Light Wash is HB, your standard pencil hardness. Medium Wash is 4B, a good soft pencil for darkening or doing sketches that scan better. Dark Wash is 8B, almost the softest a graphite pencil can get, wonderful for smudging or washing. With the Derwent Waterbrush, it became easy to paint with graphite just touching the points of these pencils with the wet brush tip.

Here's an example painted mostly in Medium Wash and Dark Wash Derwent Watersoluble Sketching Pencils with the Derwent Waterbrush. I drew no sketch lines anywhere on this, it's strictly a wash sketch done with the brush. Whether you like painting or washing over drawings, the Derwent Waterbrush is one of those small accessories that become essential as soon as you try one.

It is a bit hard to find in the USA, but worth the price if you see a Derwent waterbrush by itself or included in a gift set. For some reason it's slow or impossible to get some Derwent accessories in the USA despite how good they are and how popular they'd be if available. This is something to do with the distribution process.

So if you really want one, hunt for it and possibly be prepared to place an order with a UK online or mail order company. Then again you can always put together a list of all the Derwent items you can't find in the USA and do that all at once in an out of country order. It's worth paying a bit extra in shipping or price for this one because of its quality.


Pine Cone and Pillbox
4" x 6"
Derwent Sketch and Wash graphite watersoluble pencils
Painted with Derwent Waterbrush on Derwent A6 hard cover sketchbook paper.

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.