Caran d’Ache + Paul Smith Bicolors Special Edition

 

I succumbed: The Caran d'Ache + Paul Smith Bicolors Special Edition

I fell off the wagon. No judging, please.

During a week of high stress and anxiety, I saw that Goldspot Pens had the Caran d’Ache Paul Smith Special Edition Bicolors set in stock, and after months of resisting, I crumbled. Bicolors are my weakness! C’est la vie.

Like Cd’A’s first set of colored pencils in collaboration with British fashion designer Paul Smith (released in 2020), the latest bicolors set features Smith’s design palette and trademark stripes on the tin and sleeve. I must admit that the tin design appeals to me more than the palette. In particular, I like the thin, subtle strip of stripes on the lid’s lip on an otherwise solid black tin.

This is my favorite part of the tin -- the subtle strip of stripes on the tin's lip.

Unlike that first tin, which contained Supracolors, the latest edition contains bicolors – 12 water-soluble pencils (24 colors) and a small watercolor brush. Each pencil is stamped with “Caran d’Ache + Paul Smith” in silver. (It’s intriguing that the 2020 set puts Smith’s name first: Paul Smith + Caran d’Ache. I wish I’d been a fly on the wall when the discussion took place for that change.)

Before I even used the pencils, I was aghast by the factory sharpening: Very messy collars (that’s the type of thing I’ve seen on cheap pencils from China and India) – I don’t think I’ve ever seen any Caran d’Ache pencils that were as badly presented as these. And look at the big chip in the pink one on the left! Shame on you, Caran d’Ache.

Very sloppy collars and a huge chip

The Smith-curated palette is very . . . fashionable, I guess? Unsaturated and sophisticated, it’s a nice counterbalance to the Supracolor set, which has a more vibrant range. Although it’s not at all a range I would pick out for myself, it’s not bad for urban sketching, and it also has a good range of values (ever since my experiments inspired by the wacky Germanier palette, I find myself viewing hues as values as well as temperature). It’s not great for landscapes, though – it’s short on natural greens.

Swatches made in Hahnemuhle Akademie watercolor sketchbook. I used my Prismalo swatch page to identify as many colors as I could. 

Now let’s get to the all-important cores. A couple of months ago when the set was announced, a reader brought an interesting controversy to my attention (see comments at end of this unrelated post). Apparently the new Smith set, along with last year’s Alpine Frost holiday collection, contains student-grade Swisscolor cores. That would be a significant step down from all the previous bicolor sets, which were promoted by Caran d’Ache as containing Prismalo cores. (How insulting to Smith! Perhaps a reflection on the change in branding to put his name after Caran d’Ache’s? The plot thickens.) The reader later reported that when she asked the question directly to Cd’A’s Instagram account, she was told the Smith set actually contained Supracolor cores:

“Just to reassure you, these bi-colour pencils are actually made with our Supracolor leads, not Swisscolor. We hope you’ll enjoy their quality and performance!”

First of all, even without calipers, I could easily see that the Smith cores are too thin to be Supracolors. A few swatches were all it took to convince me that the marketing person who responded to the inquiry was sadly misinformed: These are definitely not Supracolor cores, which are much softer and creamier.

Smith bicolor at left, Supracolor at right: No way are these the same core!

The next question, then, is whether they are student-grade Swisscolor cores or, like the previous bicolor sets, the mid-grade Prismalo cores. I hadn’t used Prismalos in a while, so I refreshed my memory with a few swatches, and they are as I had remembered them: Much softer than the Smith bicolors.

My large set of Swisscolors was dispatched during my downsizing the past couple of years. However, I still have a small set that came with the kids’ travel kit I got a few years ago (a-ha – as silly as that purchase was, it came in handy after all!). I compared a few swatches.

Sample Swisscolor swatches from my large set

The bicolors’ hardness and dryness seem closer to Swisscolors than Prismalos. However, it’s important to look at the washes, not just the dry swatches. Often the pigment content of a water-soluble pencil becomes more apparent in its wash than in its dry state. When I compare the washed bicolor swatches to washed Swisscolors and Prismalos, they look closer to Prismalo. Since we can’t get a straight answer from Caran d’Ache, we may not be able to know for certain, but I’m unconvinced that they are Swisscolors.

Sample Prismalo swatches

Miffed by the drop in quality and Cd’A’s lack of transparency, I still had to make a sketch with them (below). Taking a cue from my recent experiments with trying on the themed Blick Neocolor II palettes, I challenged myself to use as many colors in the Smith bicolor set as possible. Even as an experiment, 24 colors in one sketch are a bit much, and I lost count at some point, but I used at least one side of each bicolor and several of the opposite sides, too. While that’s certainly more colors than I would ever normally use together in one sketch, they don’t look too bad together. I guess Paul Smith knows what he’s doing.

As for Caran d’Ache . . . one disappointment after another.

6/9/26 Paul Smith bicolors in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook (photo reference)