Shiny! Caran d’Ache Cosmic Blue Mixed Media Metallic Set

 

Caran d'Ache's limited edition holiday gift set includes metallic Neocolor I waxed pastels and metallic colored pencils.

The Halloween pumpkins have barely begun rotting, so you know what that means: It’s time for another limited-edition holiday set of colored pencils from Caran d’Ache! [Insert starry-eyed emoji here!] After the disappointing set of Claim Your Style Bicolor Pencils that came out in late-summer, I was afraid that was going to be all we’d see from the Swiss company this year (as far as pencils go), but I was pleasantly wrong.

As part of this year’s holiday theme, Cosmic Blue, Caran d’Ache has released a set of 10 metallic colored pencils and a Mixed Media Metallic Set that includes the 10 pencils and 10 metallic Neocolor I wax pastels. Unlike the aforementioned Claim Your Style bicolor set, which came in a flimsy cardboard box, the Cosmic Blue set comes in a sturdy, sliding-drawer box that befits gift status. I still prefer the tins that were used in previous bicolor sets, but this cardboard box will do nicely.

Although the Neocolor Is are identical to the existing standard metallic set that has been around for a while, the pencils are new. That is, the dark blue barrel with no identifying color number or name is new. The cores are likely to be the same as existing metallic pencils in Caran d’Ache’s product lines. But more on that in a minute.

I swatched the pencils and the crayons in a black Uglybook, which I knew would best show off whatever metallic sparkle they would have. As usual, my scanner dulled them way down, so I also photographed them under my desk lamp, which shows the shine much better. Although the pencil colors are not identified, the palette aligns exactly with the Neocolor palette, so I’m assuming they are the same metallic colors.

Pencil swatches scanned

Neocolor swatches scanned 

Pencil swatches photographed

Neocolor swatches photographed

With all of Caran d’Ache’s special-edition pencil sets, my question is always which of its existing pencil sets the cores come from. With some bicolor sets, the European packaging was labeled “Prismalo,” so that was easy, and swatching the pencils confirmed this. With these metallics, it’s trickier. In the Prismalo line, I could find only gold and silver (which both appear in some of the bicolor sets). The Pablo line includes only gold, silver and bronze.

The only Cd’A set I could find that contains more than gold, silver and bronze is this Fancolor set (which I don’t own – WHAT?! – so I can’t compare). The small Fancolor set of non-metallic colors that I do own is water-soluble. The Cosmic Blue pencils are barely so – water only slightly dilutes the pigment. That’s similar to how the silver and gold in the bicolor sets behave.

I know it's silly, but my favorite part of the whole Cosmic Blue
theme is that lovely shooting star under "Special Edition."

So, what are they, Caran d’Ache? My guess is that they are the same as the cores in the metallic Fancolor set, except Cd’A, in its usual casual approach to product nomenclature, has disregarded the fact that the name “Fancolor” is associated with a water-soluble pencil. (Perhaps Fancolor just means “student grade” or “it’s student grade, but so is Swisscolor.”) Thanks, as always, Cd’A, for confusing consumers.

For the record, the metallic Neocolor Is do not dissolve at all. If they did, they would be Neocolor IIs (unless Caran d’Ache decided to confuse consumers about those names, too).

As soon as I saw these metallic pencils and crayons, I thought of nocturne sketching season, which begins right now with the Big Dark. To practice for it, I used the black Uglybook to sketch the scene below from a reference photo I took about a year ago (the light looked like the golden hour, but it was actually early afternoon). I used gold, dark gold and silver pencils to draw the initial shapes, then filled in large areas with the corresponding crayons. Once again, the scanner took out all the sparkle, but my phone shot shows it off well. Oooh, I like these!

11/12/24 photo reference

My current everyday-carry Uglybook is a dark Christmas green, which I’m finding difficult to use. The paper’s hue is too dark to be a midtone for my usual tonal way of sketching in these books, so I have to crank my brain to “see” both the highlights and the midtones while leaving the paper color for the darks. In the on-location comics page below, I used the silver and rose Neocolors for highlights. I think they’re especially effective as backgrounds. I’ve kept them in my bag for use with this book.

11/10/24 Metropolitan Market, Crown Hill

Although we all know I would have bought this set for no reason at all (other than my love for Caran d’Ache), I’m excited to have something new to play with during the Big Dark.

One more bit of good news about the Cosmic Blue products: While all previous holiday releases were available only from European shops, this one was being promoted by US retailers at the time of Caran d’Ache’s announcement. I bought my set from Goldspot, but a general search brings up many US retailers.