Water-Soluble Colored Pencil Comparison

9/12/16 water-soluble colored pencils, 140 lb. Canson XL watercolor paper

Although I’ve been using them for a long time, water-soluble colored pencils have intriguing properties that I have only begun to explore. My favorite brand for a couple of years has been Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelles for its softness of application and ability to dissolve completely. They are pricey, though, so after getting a small starter set, I buy the other colors open stock. (That’s actually an economical way to buy any colored pencil, because pre-made sets always seem to have several colors I seldom use. Ahem. That knowledge doesn’t always prevent me from buying sets, however. I’m a sucker for beautiful boxed sets – what can I say?)

Compared to other colored pencil lines, Museum Aquarelles come in a fairly narrow range of hues because the pigments have to be lightfast to be in the collection. So I fill in colors I can’t get in the Museum line with my other favorites – Faber-Castell’s Albrecht Dürer and Caran d’Ache’s Supracolor. All three are excellent pencils (which means I can probably stop “researching” other brands, right? Surely, you jest). In addition, of all the pencils I own, these three are the only ones I know of that are available open stock.

Besides those, I’ve tried a number of other brands, some of which I like and others that I can do without. In some cases I received samples from vendors in various symposium or other event goodie bags, and in other cases I bought small sets. My tests include swatching them on various paper types and making small still lifes. These tests tend to be haphazard and spontaneous, however, and I end up forgetting which sketchbook contains which test results.

On a recent rainy afternoon, I decided to make myself a single test sheet of all the water-soluble colored pencil brands I have at least samples of. (Some took a bit of time to chase down because, following Ana Reinert’s lead, I started putting colored pencils all over the house instead of storing them only in my studio. Some people like to put vases of flowers in every room; I’m happier with mugs of colored pencils!) Shown here are the results done on a page of Stillman & Birn Beta paper.

The “dry” column is a very subjective test of how the pencil feels when I lay down a swatch with my natural (fairly heavy) pressure. My preference is always for a soft, creamy application rather than hard, so this is the test that many pencils fail (for me). If it feels hard and scratchy to me, I will probably not use it much. From this test, I also learn how much crumbly dust the pencil leaves behind. (I had to blow all that off before scanning, however, so you can’t see the results.) In addition, the dry test is to see how well a swatch covers the Beta’s medium-coarse texture with one somewhat aggressive application (how much paper shows through in the recessed areas).

As expected in this highly subjective test, the “dry” test revealed all my faves (Caran d’Ache Museum, Caran d’Ache Supracolor, Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer) to be among the softest in application and least dust-producing. However, Crafter’s Companion Spectrum Noir AquaBlend (a relatively difficult brand to source, it turns out, as I found it only on Amazon and not at any of the stores I shop at) turned out to be surprisingly soft and creamy – even more so than Supracolor and Dürer. It produces a lot of crumbs, though.

The “wet-on-dry” column shows one wipe-through with a waterbrush without scrubbing the swatch. In other words, it’s a test of how quickly and completely the pigment dissolves with the addition of water. This technique is probably the most-commonly used with water-soluble pencils – color an area with an application of dry pencil, then activate that spot of dry pigment with water applied with a brush. The addition of water makes the hue more intense but can also sometimes change the hue slightly from its dry state. It’s a very easy way to make a small, easily controlled spot of color.

The same four best performers in the “dry” test also did well in the “wet-on-dry” test by being the fastest and most complete dissolvers. The worst was Palomino Aquas (which was also crumbly, dry and hard in application in the “dry” test).

The “licked” column shows the result of “licking” (I tried to think of a better term but came up blank; I have to thank Larry Marshall for that highly technical term!) a waterbrush against the pencil tip to pick up pigment, then painting it onto the paper in a manner similar to using conventional watercolors. The color tends to be a bit more watery than using straight watercolor paints, however. The “licking” test was the most inconclusive in that they all put down about the same amount of pigment by this method. Or perhaps conclusive in that this attribute is the great equalizer.

Finally, the “dry-on-wet” column was made by spraying a generous amount of water on the paper, then scribbling directly into the wetness with the pencil. This was my favorite test because it was the most revealing. As expected, my top three – Museum, Supracolor and Dürer – dissolved rapidly and richly when smeared through wet paper. This is how I want water-soluble pencils to behave when I use them this way. AquaBlend also behaved predictably well in this test, given its similar softness. Cretacolor Marino was the biggest surprise. In dry application, it felt relatively soft, and dissolved acceptably in the “wet-on-dry” test. But when scribbled on wet paper, it hardly dissolved at all, making a faint, dry line. 

The pencils that applied relatively dryly, such as Palomino and Art Grip Aquarelles, also skidded through water in a dry, unsavory manner. The exception was Derwent Inktense, which goes on dry compared to my favorites, but when pushed through water, it really put out intense, inky color. (Interestingly, it didn't dissolve fully in the wet-on-dry test.) Caran d’Ache Fancolor, which applies relatively soft (I liked it when I wrote my full review a couple months ago but didn’t test them wet on dry), was disappointing in this test. I love the way water-soluble pencils bloom with rich, intense pigment on wet paper because it’s an effect not easily achieved with any other medium, so pencils that fail that test are deal-breakers for me.

Yesterday morning I took my usual fistful of Museum Aquarelles to Maple Leaf Park with the express intention of using as many water-soluble colored pencil techniques as possible in one sketch – and no other medium. At the top of the post you can see the sketch when I finished it at the park. Normally I would use watercolor or ink in a waterbrush to paint sky because a wet medium seems to be required – I’ve never liked the look of a sky colored with a dry medium. But to keep my test sketch pure, I used the wet-on-dry technique: I made several strokes of blue pencil on the paper and then dissolved that with the waterbrush.

After I scanned the image above, I thought the sky (which was a brilliant, clear blue yesterday) looked too pale and wimpy. To intensify the color, I used a variation of wet on dry (in the diagram below, I’m calling it “pre-dissolved wet on dry”): I applied a rich swatch of dry pencil to scrap paper, wet the swatch generously, and then dipped into the resulting puddle of pigment with a waterbrush to paint a second wash of color onto the sky. It’s generally not a good idea to futz around and overwork watercolor in this way, since the results are more often worse than better, but at least the sky is a bit more intensely blue. This method of using water-soluble pencils, by the way, seems closest to traditional watercolors.

Shown below is the final sketch with all the techniques labeled.

I really like the way the pine trees came out fuzzy and a bit blurry with a dry-on-wet application. However, I’m learning that it’s important to gauge carefully how wet the paper is when putting the pencil in. I started drawing the trees from left to right. By the time I got over to the right side of the paper, I was afraid it was too dry, so I gave it another dose of water. The puddle on the paper’s surface was a bit too much, and when I put the pencil in, the pigment started floating around. I sopped up some of the excess water with a napkin, but you can see where the trees got a little too fuzzy and blurry.

I’m sure I’ve only skimmed the surface of what these magical pencils can do!

Edited: I completely forgot about Derwent Inktense until Terrie reminded me, so I went back and added it to the test table.

Same sketch as above but with a second wash of color added to the sky.

OK, this is just gratuitous eye candy -- colored pencils
on my kitchen counter.