I would like to introduce Stan. He is a beginning drawer who works in coloured pencil and pen and ink. He will be taking us on his journey with him as he learns about materials and improves his technique. Look for a series of posts over the coming months. Thanks for sharing with us Stan!

As something of a novice in the area of coloured pencil drawing, I didn’t want to start out with the most expensive pencils going in case it turned out this is not the medium for me.

I have recently been widening my repertoire of materials to see what else is out there, what different tools and materials are good for and, of course, if they are worth the cost!

Over the course of a few posts I will be looking at pencils, papers, tools and books that are out there but today I will start with the obvious – the pencils themselves.

My starting point was a pack of generic stationery shop coloured pencils – what I believe is commonly called “student grade”. A pack of about 20 colours can be picked up for less than a fiver and pretty much “do the job” in terms of having a scribble and seeing what effects can be achieved.

Having played around with these for long enough and wondering, mostly out of curiousity what the difference is between student grade and something well, in a tin.

I started with Faber Castell Polychromos and then indulged both my hankering for the smell of wood and curiousity with a set of Luminance pencils.

Polychromos and Luminance pencils

For the sake of argument – please assume that I was working entirely on basic white marker paper. I chose marker paper as a starting point because I tend to combine pen and ink with coloured pencil (more on this to follow). Yes I’m sure there are purists out there reading this who will clench at the thought of using Luminance pencils on marker paper, but I think this is a good way to carry out a fair comparison of pencils. (Editor’s note: this paper is very smooth and is not usually used for coloured pencil techniques where the artist often wants a bit of tooth on the paper. Stan has used this paper for his ink drawing before so is using it now when he combines the two mediums. I understand he will be doing a paper comparison/review in the future.)

The most noticeable differences between the pencils is basically the softness of the lead. I assume this is because there is more pigment and less binder. The softness affects every aspect of the drawing process.

Shading
Where the softness factor comes into things most obviously is when trying to shade slightly larger areas. In my experience, shading with student grade coloured pencils creates a less consistent effect. There are more obvious lines in the shaded area and more variations of pressure evident in the shaded area no matter how careful you are. This is slightly less noticeable with the Faber Castell but when I tried it with the Luminance brand it was really very evident. Now this could be down to my technique but if someone as untrained as my good self can clearly see a difference then others may also.

Blending
Blending can be done with other pencils, card sticks (stumps or tortillions), a special blending pencil or (at a push) your finger. I think this is another post but certainly, the further you move up the pencil quality ladder, the easier it becomes to blend. Perhaps it’s because there is more colour on the page, perhaps because it is softer there is more product there to blend. Perhaps (as above) the colour sits on the paper instead of being pushed into it by some of the harder student grade pencils.

Burnishing
When using a burnisher (and again more on this to come), I have found that the colours are a lot brighter with the higher quality pencils. This was particularly obvious to me with the Luminance pencils. Using a burnisher on student-grade pencils seems to have little effect but with the Faber-Castells or the Luminance the colour really becomes richer and more vibrant. Perhaps, as suggested above, this is because of the amount of pigment in the pencils.

Mix and match
The thing about pencils rather than paints is, rather obviously, you can’t mix them. Yes you can layer and combine but colours tend to lay on top of each other rather than truly blending. For this reason, I don’t think that I would choose one brand and stick to it. One box of Luminance, as beautiful as it is, does not contain every colour you could ever need. And the idea of buying all of the colours they make sends off alarms in my bank managers office. Therefore I have found that I like to use a range of colours from both professional and student grades.

Sometimes hard lead is good
This is not just for colours though. In some cases a harder pencil is just what you need. The downside of softer pencils is that sometimes they are harder to control and if you are trying to keep within certain lines then its easier to use a harder pencil with a finer tip than mop up afterwards with putty rubber. (Editor’s note: remember to sharpen your pencils often, even a soft pencil should be able to have a fine point and accurate mark.)

There may also be artist quality pencils out there that are harder than the likes of Luminance so I shall have a hunt around and see what I can find for future posts.

Of course all of these pencils produce different effects depending on the types of paper you are working on. More to come on this in a future post.

-Scribbly Stan