Jane
and I had an art day. I went over to her place with some of my materials
and she dragged out her materials and we tested them all out. One of
those materials was the AquaTone woodless watercolor pencils.

They
had a nice smooth texture as I used them on dry paper, laying down a
nice even amount of color. When I used a wet brush on them they
completely dissolved with a little scrubbing action. The colors moved
around the page well. Used on wet paper the pencil lay down a generous
amount of pigment and are still moveable with a wet brush.  

The
colors are mostly named after traditional artist colors- burnt umber,
scarlett lake, etc… The colors blend well. Cost is a touch higher than
other watercolor pencils, around $22 for a 12 piece tin. The size of
the pencil is quite generous, they are slightly longer than most colored
pencils and the same diameter without the wood casing. I think the size
and lack of wood makes up for the price.

I really enjoyed using these pencils, the nice texture and size make them a winner in my book.

This
is a compact brightly colored jelly bean shaped sharpener with a
shaving receptacle. There are 2 holes- one for oversized pencils and one
for regular sized pencils. The point delivered by the smaller of the 2
holes is relatively long, while the large hole delivers a short stubby
point. the receptacle for shavings doesn’t hold a lot, but saves you
from having to visit the trash every time you sharpen a pencil. Instead
you’ll empty it every 3 or 4 times.

I
enjoy it’s cheerful bright color and the fact that I can find it’s
bright orange jelly bean shape on my messy art desk, or in the pocket of
my bag. The holes have a convenient little cover that slides in and
out. The cover prevents dust and spills from occurring in transport. A
nifty idea and one that works remarkably well.

Should
the blades on the sharpener get dull you can buy new blades, pull the
sharpener out and replace them. The 2 hole oval sharpener body will
accept a replacement sharpener.

I’m
pretty happy with this little sharpener. I purchased it specifically
for sharpening my colored pencils but I like the point it leaves on
other pencils. The cost for this sharpener was $3.58. HIgh when compared
to other less well made sharpeners. I’m a firm believer that you get
what you pay for in sharpeners. The blades on my KUM sharpeners last for
hundreds of pencils where I’ve had cheap sharpeners die after one or 2
pencils. I also like the fact that I can replace the blades as they
dull.

I expect this sharpener to last a good long time.

I’m
working on the Journal Fodder 365 challenge over on my ning site. Feel
free to go and join the group here. Good stuff. One of the things the
JFJ suggest that I hardly ever use and didn’t have in my arsenal are
colored pencils. I have some, but not many and a few select colors. I
haven’t used CP in years. So at a recent trip to A&C I picked up a
few singles of a variety of colors form a range of brands. I’ve used a
few different brands of CP extensively- Prismacolor, Prang large core
and Palomino. All are good, feature a large creamy core of intense
color. I prefer CP that lay down a large quantity of color with ease. I
despise Col-erase CP by Prismacolor.

I
picked up the following: Koh-i-nor tricolor, Koh-i-nor progresso
woodless, and Faber-Castell polychrome. The progresso woodless were the
least expensive and are available at a variety of locations, so you can
buy them with a coupon. The tricolor were in the middle in terms of
price and are slightly less available but I have seen them at AC Moore.
The Polychrome were the most expensive  and least accessible in that I
don’t think I’ve ever seen them anywhere but A&C and Blick.

The
progresso pencil was the most surprising of all. It’s lower price point
led me to believe it would be the worst of the group. It was far from
it. The lead was well pigmented and I was able to put down a  nice swath
of color with ease and even pressure. The point wore well. It sharped
with ease in a standard sharpener. The only problem I found with the
progresso pencil was that if you drop them the colored core fractures
and pressure will snap the pencil into pieces. I found this to be
annoying but at the same time not a huge deal.


The
Tri-color were the sturdiest pencils of the lot, I never broke the
lead, even with heavy handed pressure. The thick wooden triangular
barrel keeps the lead safe. The color was slightly weaker than the other
2 pencils. It also needed to be sharpened with a knife. I know it has a
specialized sharpener but I didn’t purchase one. These would be a great
pencil to use with kids, as they are super tough.
The
polychrome was the best performer. Laying down a swath of color was no
problem, it practically leapt to the page. And the color once applied
was intense and smooth. The core on these pencils is the thinnest of the
3 purchased, so in addition to being the most expensive option it’s the
lowest value. However the intensity of color is superb and the best of
the lot. These are clearly artist grade and perform close to what I
remember to be Prismacolor performance, a gold standard in my book.

I
was surprised by all these pencils. I expected at least one of them to
suck- be too hard, pale or a waste of money. Any of these pencils would
be a good value. With the 12 pack of the progresso woodless being about
$7 without coupon they take the crown of best bang for your buck. They
also have the most amount of lead- in that the pencil has no wood, so
its all color. The tricolor was slightly less soft and creamy, taking a
little more effort to get pigment on the page, but still not a bad
value. The polychrome was the best performer but the most expensive,

Per pencil price at A&C:
Progresso: $.57
Triocolor: $1.85
Polychrome: $2.43

Pens tested:

• Sharpie Brush Pens- Green, Purple, Blue
• Copic Cad Yellow Brush Pen
• Zig Clean Color Brush Pen: Bright Yellow, Prussian Blue, Green
• Uniball Signo DX .28 Bright Blue, Black .18, .28, .38
• Several Create-a-color 5.5mm Leads

Method:
I drew lines, scribbles, and a block of color on acid free archival
paper. The page was cut in half. the loose page was placed in a south
facing window that gets full sun for the majority of the day.I placed
the sheet in the window on August 30th, 2012. I took it down on
September 13th, 2012.

Let’s
start with the good. There was no color shift in any of the
Create-a-color leads. No worries there. The Uni-ball pens also had no
color shift, not even the bright blue color. The gris Nuage ink by J
Herbin also showed no signs of color shifting. This is a second test for
this ink. I like to affirm my previous tests, just in case.

The
bad. Let’s start with the Sharpies. Sharpie makes no lightfastness
claims. They don’t even bother with claiming their markers are archival.
No claims, no surprises. The green had major color loss. The purple was
mostly magenta after 2 weeks. The blue showed off some major color loss
and change. This was all expected. These are not lightfast. Do not
consider it archival and do not use it in finished art.

The
next on my list of bad is the Copic Cad Yellow marker. In the art world
Cad Yellow is not considered a fugitive color. In fact if you find a
painting with cad yellow in it from 200 years ago, that color is likely
to be still true to the day it was placed, depending on where it was
stored yada yada yada. The copic yellow marker had a major color shift
in 2 weeks and lost much of it brightness. What was left was a pale
yellow ghost. In some areas, where I’d had a light touch the color was
completely gone. The layered areas also showed color change and loss.
The Copic marker is not lightfast. Do not consider it archival, do not
use it in finished art.

The
next series of markers that are in the bad category were the Zig Clean
Color Brush markers. Zig makes a great deal of archival markers for the
scrapping market. I had to test them. In 2 weeks the color of the bright
yellow was completely gone. As in a shadow remained, as in you couldn’t
 tell a color had been there, unless you already knew. The Prussian
blue and the green showed a great deal of color shift and loss. The
black, perhaps the most disappointing of all, turned purple and was well
on it’s way to disappearing. Zig does not advertise the Clean Color
markers as archival, light fast or even acid free; simply watebased. As
such I’m sure I can say with confidence that you shouldn’t consider them
any of the above either. Again, don’t use these in finished art pieces.

What
does this all mean? You can go ahead and use these in your art journal
and sketchbook- any place that will be kept out of sunlight, but be
aware that these could shift color if exposed to any strong sunlight,
really for any period of time. Let’s face it, even in the summer
Massachusetts  sun is not considered all that tough and tougher pigments
and dyes often outlast it. I’d also caution you to be aware of buying
art from people who use Copics in their finished pieces, they were
initially made for the marketing world, where finished art is often
tossed after it’s been photographed. The markers did not need to be
lightfast. Now that people are using them for other art, Copic should
really consider making their markers lightfast.

In college I took a figure drawing summer course. The professor came up from the Savannah School of art to enjoy the Maine summer and teach 3 classes: figure drawing and 2 sections of monotype. In the figure drawing class he carried a simple china marker. He would, after asking permission draw on top of our sketches with his china marker. Je liked them because they wrote over everything, leaving behind a bold line. It also helped that they were dirt cheap. I don't remember what brand he used but he carried a variety of colors, red, blue and black.

A few weeks back I was in Artist and Craftman and found a cup full of them in a variety of colors, around 70 cents each. I  picked up a white and a yellow. The yellow is lightfast and I'd assume the white to be as well.

I've been using these on toned pages to add some delicate colors back into my ink drawings. They  look a lot like chalk but aren't dusty or smudgey.These are a great way for art journalers to add white to a page when they don't want the look of a ultra fine line pen.

I found multicolor 12 packs on amazon for less than $10.

I
like Kuretake waterbrushes so I thought these might be neat. I order 4
colors: yellow, green, blue and black from Jetpens. Pricing was $3.30
per pen. I do not know if these are available anywhere else. They come
in single colors from Jetpens as well as a larger package that has an
attractive hard translucent case.

I
got a mix of styles of these pens, some new and some old style. The new
style has a clear cap and a matching color section on the pen itself.
While the old style has a grey section and a color cap to match the
color of the pen. I have to say I like the clear caps better, they
simply look sharper. Not all of my pens came shrink wrapped. I think
this is a just a matter of new and old stock being mixed in the same bin
and it was no big deal.

The
brushes aren’t as springy as say my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen or even my
Kuretake waterbrushes but they provided a nice fine to broadline. The
ink is watersoluble and when adding water to it you can get some really
nice watercolor like effects. My favorite part of these were how well
they responded to water.

The
colors on their own are deep and bold. They don’t layer well, though
they are mostly transparent. They just don’t mix well, which is sad, because
they have so much potential to be a really cool sketching tool. If I
could layer the blue and yellow and green to get various shades of color
it would add another layer of depth. I did mix them with water and
found that each color did mix to give a sort of primary school like
color blend. A search found that there are 95 differnt colors available, many shades of the colors of I purchased. With a few more colors I'm pretty sure these would make for an expesive but complete sketching option.

Instead
of using these like watercolors I decided to approach them like alcohol
markers, layering them in bright bold colors, much like I did with the
sharpie brush markers. The effect is much like with any brush marker,
bright and bold, lots of great line weight and essentially looking
pretty good. In another instance I worked them like watercolors and was pleased with the results. The ink really moves around on the page well.

These
had a lot of variation in the amount of ink applied, when moving really
fast I was able to get some nice texture from the paper.

I
do not know if these are lightfast or not. I’ve got a card up in a
window so I’ll know in a month or 2. I expect major color shifting
across the week. In a month I expect major color loss as well. I do not
expect these to be lightfast, though I know that other ZIG markers are
lightfast. These are not made for the American market so it could be
that they simply do not label them as such.

I
like these, but like any brush marker they are for sketching only, at
least until I know they are lightfast. I do really enjoy sketching with
them. You get clean consistent color without fading like when you mix
your own watercolors. If you get it on your hands it washes right off.
The way the ink applies is great for landscapes and figure drawing. The
pen is not refillable.

All
that being said I find I’m being pulled in by these big bold colors.
I’ve been working black and white or with lots of crazy color lately,
these pens will add fuel to the crazy color fire  I’ve been burning.

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