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.

Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle Water Brush Set

Sorry for the long two year hiatus. After moving from San Francisco to Arkansas, I got tied up in a lot of offline activity and also had to adapt to a new climate. Happily though, I'm back to getting new art supplies and testing them, so let's see what the newest water brushes I got are like!

Caran d’Ache Piston Fill Water Brush

I’ve been using various water brushes for years. Niji and Sakura Koi are my two favorites, with an old Derwent a close third.

I’ve also enjoyed many other Caran d’Ache products. They tend to be pricy but worth the money, very high quality and good lasting intensity. Crayons and pencils and paints are all pigment rich, consistent, good texture and easy to use. So I thought, this ought to be interesting. Unlike many other products from this manufacturer, the price is similar to the other brands. So if you like these, it’s really just a matter of taste.

The main difference is in how they fill and that one of three point options is a fiber tip, along with a large round and medium round. They didn’t have a small round.

The ones I’m used to fill by squeezing and release water by squeezing. These new ones work by a piston fill system. The brush head comes off just like a regular one, but then you dip the barrel into a glass or dish of water and turn the knob on the end to draw up the water into the compartment.

I had trouble with it at first, the knob was stuck on the fiber tip one so I couldn’t get it to move at all. I tried again with the medium brush head and found on the first go that I’d only managed to pick up about 1/4” of water. In several tries I managed to more or less fill that, then tried the fiber tip one again. Same thing, it took several passes to get it full the first time. The large one was easier because I had a bit of practice with the other two.

Compared to the ease of filling a Niji water brush by holding the barrel under the tap and squeezing, it was slower and a bit more cumbersome. Also the piston sticks out of the end of the brush afterward, making it a bit harder to store in a pencil box or bag unless it’s long enough. So there’s two points of minor inconvenience. Still, the real test with this is whether because of the piston system, the water flow is more controllable.

One of the things that’s unique in this three-brush Museum Aquarelle set is that there’s a large round, a medium round and a fiber tip water brush. Artists who prefer using brush tip markers or bullet tip markers may really enjoy having a water brush that’s got a resilient fiber tip. The texture is markers, the color is as unlimited as your watercolor mixing skill.

The only comparable product is the clear blender in the Tombow dual tip brush pen sets. Those are clear water and have the same fiber tip brush tip as the colored ones, used for blending out the watersoluble inks of the Tombows. So you could use that with a pocket watercolor set for convenience, or with watersoluble pencils colored or graphite. Still, the Tombows aren’t easily refillable or made to be refillable and the Caran d’Ache product is. We’ll have to see how it holds up under heavy use, to really know how strong the fiber point is. But I’ll give it a go anyway in testing it.

A refillable fiber tip pen could be worth a little inconvenience in itself. It has its own texture and of course could also be used to modify and spread watersoluble markers like the Winsor & Newton Watercolor Markers that I’ve come to love.

So, let’s try that fiber tip brush.

Well, that was a pleasant surprise. Using Sennelier pan watercolors, I worked from a challenge photo and created a pair of cats, more sketched than painted. The fiber tip water brush behaved a lot more like a bullet tip marker than a brush pen.

Marks fade naturally at the usual pace of a water brush and unlike most markers, leave enough moisture on the paper to blend completely into a wash when scribbled. The cats were more drawn than painted, it was quick and easy.

Marker artists will enjoy that fiber tip brush. Water flow is very similar to the Niji water brush and I didn’t have to fiddle with the plunger often, only once when cleaning the tip to get the last of the black out. Color stayed in at a light hue for a long time, which became mildly frustrating when changing colors. But that was inexperience, now I know to really rinse the tip it’s not going to be a major problem.

The line is clean and reasonably broad, maybe 1 1/2 millimeters. The feel is solid and the hue even throughout the line. I can get it to a thinner line with very light use but not to the fine point that brush tips with hairs get. Overall the feel of the tip is more like a medium or broad nib Sharpie - solid, wide line, smooth laydown.

The water went through at a fast clip, but that was something I expected from the way the reservoir filled. It’d be good if using this in the field to keep a water cup handy as well as these brushes, though in the studio that fiber tip has its own strengths.

Some artists load water brushes with ink or liquefied watercolor. That eliminates the fade as the water comes through the head and can allow for a good number of interesting effects, like using several values in several brushes. Unlike most Caran d’Ache products, the price is comparable to the Niji waterbrush and other similar products.

The reservoir is much smaller than the Niji or the Sakura, more like the reservoir of a fountain pen. But still, that tip is excellent and the piston mechanism is manageable with a little practice. I’d just be sure to have a good source of water available if using it for travel sketching, or use several of them.

So now let's have a look at the others. I picked out a different challenge photograph, sketched it with a set of 12 Derwent Inktense that I keep around for travel sketching and washed it with the Medium Museum Aquarelle brush.

This may not be my greatest wildlife sketch, but it's not that bad either and the water brush performed beautifully. It came to a good fine point. The water flow was just right, not too much or too little. I could pump more through to change colors by twisting the piston, or let it be and let it flow naturally. It flows a little heavier than the Niji, but just right when it comes to a sketch and wash.

I wanted to leave some distinct lines in it, so didn't scrub down or wash it so thoroughly that they'd dissolve. My shading wasn't very even, but the brush smoothed that out lovely while still being able to get into tiny details without disturbing them.

All in all, I'd say try the Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle water brushes. Even with a little inconvenience learning to fill them, they're good quality. If you don't get any others, try a Fiber Tip one for variety of tip - but the brush ones are excellent and stand up with my best. Of course in the long run, I'll have to go back in a couple of years and see how long they last. But I trust they will likely be long wearing, considering the quality of Caran d'Ache goods. Their pricing seems mostly to reflect how much pigment goes into things like pencils, paint and crayons - they are always very pigment rich. This time it's just a well made tool that has its own unique place in my kit now!