Art Supply Addicts Anonymous for 2012

[RainySea]

WOW, I didn't know that about the Derwent tinted charcoal and had been considering getting some one of these days. Thanks for the info Sandra.

Rebecca, sorry to hear you are disappointed with the Mungyo watercolor crayons.

I'm cleaning and packing to move in the next couple months and came across this little case which was for the face plate of my car stereo on my truck (which was totalled in Feb by a guy that ran red light and hit me!)

So I was gonna throw it out but then realized it would fit pens nicely and the little padded things in the top part keeps them from moving around. The case fits great into my purse. I fit the following pens in there, which include some of my favs and make a nice take-along set (actually I like the Tombow brush pens better than the Akashiya ones but they were too long to fit in this box so settled for Akashiya which are ok):

sharpie fine point
vision uniball pen
pentel pocket brush
white signo
waterbrush
two akashiya waterbrush pens in light brown and darker brown

[CandAlArt]

Rainy, Clever repurposing of the sanyo box, perfect size! Hope your move goes smoothly- long distance? The sorting & packing can be tough!!

[RainySea]

Prismacolor has new brush markers. Here is a video about them with demo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXWSY...ature=youtu.be

[RebeccaJFleming]

Originally Posted by gakinme

Oh, you did manage to get the Creatcolor Aquastics. Good. I'll be interested to hear how you like them compared to Neocolor II.

Btw, I want to share this post. I used colored pencils on a little canvas yesterday compared to Holbein oil pastels and of all the sets, I reached for Derwent Drawing Collection. It just so happens that I have the right colors but also because I'm going to hang these little canvases up and I don't want to have to worry about lightfastness.

I'm very tempted to buy the set of Talens Royal Van Gogh colored pencils from the UK which is all lightfast - all 72 pcs of it, but then, I already have Luminance and Faber Castell and Lyra. Perhaps I don't have to.

Rebecca, you might also want to test out Koh I Noor Progresso woodless colored pencils. Said to be lightfast with only 24 colors. The more I use it, the more I like it. If it is truly lightfast, it displaces Prismacolor Artstiks. It's rather opaque too. My experiments last night here.

Looks like you got some nice results with the Progresso pencils. I didn't know Koh I Noor was an artist grade brand, I got a set of their little watercolours free with a sketchbook and it was rubbish, so I assumed it was just a poor quality student brand. I might hunt around and see if I can pick up some of the pencils cheap.

My AquaStics haven't arrived yet, but I started back at uni yesterday and the campus bookshop was having a sale on art supplies, so of course I had to go in This is what I ended up with:

In the background are three A4 sheets of Mi-Teintes textured paper. I also got an A4 Moleskine sketching journal, as well as some other goodies I dug out of the clearance tubs (I probably looked like a homeless person foraging through a dumpster for half an hour haha). Three tubes of Winsor and Newton Artisan water-mixable oil paints (Raw Sienna, Cadmium Red Dark and Phthalo Blue Red Shade) for about $10, four tubes of Daler-Rowney Artist watercolours for $5 (Manganese Blue Hue, Mars Violet, Gamboge Hue and Terre Verte Hue), a little matchbox-sized pack of four Conte sketching crayons (white, black, sanguine and bistre) and a box of 12 Prismacolor white pencils for $10. All the Prismas are marked as being made in USA, so hopefully they don't give me too many hassles.

On a side note, I started doing a comparison of all the coloured pencils I own on my blog, and I stuck one on my window and one in my bedroom drawer. After only seven days, the Graphitint pencils have almost completely greyed out, and where the wash was only thin, it has faded very badly; most of the other pencils show little to no signs of fading yet. I was expecting Graphitint to fade eventually, but not within one week

[gakinme]

Rebecca, don't buy the whole set of Koh I Noor yet. Just a couple to try out. I read your colored pencil test and would love to see the results. If you could pls test the Cretacolor Aquastics against the Caran D'ache neocolors too and of course Koh I Noor. I'm totally interested in their lightfastness.

And thank you for your detailed tests. Love it!! Ah, graphitint and Derwent products...they gives us so much inconsistency against their lightfastness chart. You are the second one to say Graphitint fades fast already despite what their chart says. Headaches!!!

[RebeccaJFleming]

Originally Posted by gakinme

Rebecca, don't buy the whole set of Koh I Noor yet. Just a couple to try out. I read your colored pencil test and would love to see the results. If you could pls test the Cretacolor Aquastics against the Caran D'ache neocolors too and of course Koh I Noor. I'm totally interested in their lightfastness.

And thank you for your detailed tests. Love it!! Ah, graphitint and Derwent products...they gives us so much inconsistency against their lightfastness chart. You are the second one to say Graphitint fades fast already despite what their chart says. Headaches!!!

As soon as I get the AquaStics, I'll be doing another 'product comparison' post comparing the AquaStics, the Derwent Artbar and the Neocolor 2, since they're probably the main three water soluble wax crayons (that I know of anyway, they're the ones most people seem to mention). Not going to bother including the Mungyo ones, since they were a horrid waste of time. I'm definitely looking forward to doing that test, since I quite like the watersoluble wax crayon medium. Plus I want to see how quickly some of my favourite Artbar colours fade I'm also looking forward to scanning the 'sheltered' copy of the colour chart, since I've heard reports of some people having either Graphitint or Inktense drawings fade even while they were kept in a closed journal. Such a shame, really, I love drawing with Graphitint and you can get some beautiful effects with them, but you basically have to scan it and keep a digital copy, since the original isn't really stable enough to do anything with.

How soft/hard are the Progresso pencils? I don't know if any local art shops sell them but I might order two or three next time I place a big order with another art supplier.

Does anyone know what the standard length of time is to leave a colour chart in a sunny window for a lightfastness test? I was planning on scanning both copies after 1 month and 2 months, but I don't know if there's an 'ideal' length of time to conduct the test for. When I have scanned them I'll be adding them to that original coloured pencil comparison blog post.

[rickop]

Rebecca,

It is my impression that the number of hours of sunlight matters more than anything. The thought that crosses my mind is that if you have some rated art supplies you could include some samples of known grades to see if which level it fades like. Not incredibly accurate, but good enough to understand the relative standing.

Rick

[gakinme]

Rebecca, I am not sure either. I've seen some comparisons within a month and it was marked difference already, some do it for 3 months and some for six months.

I've been reading ink reviews at the Pen and Ink forum and they do them in 1 and 3 months and already, the winners come out already and others drop like flies.

Koh I Noor is not as soft as Prismacolor but its coverage is much bigger and quicker than a pencil point since it's woodless so it gives an impression that it's soft. It's probably close to a Bruyzneel pencil from Holland, which is slightly harder than a Faber Castell Polychromos. I'm curious about the non-watersoluable type rather than the watercolor pencil version since anytime it's soluble, it's a little bit less lightfast.

It claims to be lightfast and that's why I'm curious truly how lightfast it is.

[CandAlArt]

From Rebecca: " How soft/hard are the Progresso pencils? I don't know if any local art shops sell them but I might order two or three next time I place a big order with another art supplier. "

As Sandra said, they seem softer perhaps because so much color is exposed compared to wood cased pencils. I love the feel of them, soft & smooth. They can be sharpened to a nice point or used broadside which makes them very "creative" feeling to me. And nice color. Here is one oddity- when I first looked for these in stores by the name Progresso I couldn't find them-- on my package that name is nowhere! It is only printed on the side of the pencil itself. My box (quite cute slide open 2 layer box) it only says Koh-I-Noor, finest Hardmuth color, Woodless Colour Pencils. Sandra- did yours have Progresso on the package?? Made in Czech Republic, interestingly. Not China.

[gakinme]

Candace, that's right. On the box it didn't say Progresso at all. It's on the pencil itself that says it.

I found the lightfast chart of their products here.

http://www.kohinoorusa.com/products/...less/index.php

Out of 24, pink, dark violet, light violet, scarlet has less than 2 star, 4 being excellent. There is this guy in the colored pencil forum who does his commissions with these pencils on canvas!

I personally find it a very unique product. The first layer of color could be light but if you layer it, it darkens more and more without so called wax bloom. I remember reading from some book that this product is clay based so it acts quite differently from wax colored pencils but I could mix the two. It's equally dissolvable in solvent and coloring a page of background is so fast with this product. It dissolves better than Prismacolor Artstics in solvent. Let me post two samples in the next post.

[gakinme]

Here is a shoddily made page.

Top piece is Koh I Noor Woodless Progresso colored pencils and bottom piece is Prismacolor Art Stix.

The brown bushes has Copic marker blender, Shinhan marker blender, Grumbacher pre tested odorless thinner in 3 segments. And boat has thinner.

Prisma is blotchier since it's softer. Under solvent, Progresso retains character and color but Prisma seems a bit more of a mess. Prisma is harder to erase after solvent. Progresso is very erasable even after solvent.



Here's a quick doodle.

Left one is Prisma Arstix, Right one is Koh I Noor Progresso woodless pencil.

The right one maintains brightness of colors and character. The left one's neck, I blend it with an Artstix which for some reason has no color. I thought it might be some umber but there's no color at all and so I used it as a blender and it's flat! I put more of the color to deepen and the colors get muddier and muddier.

The right one doesn't have that problem at all.

No solvent on this page.

The Art Stix is a background colorant and not necessarily even because it's made curled in most of the 48 pc set I have. Koh I Noor Progresso is literally a sketching pencil for multi sized strokes and of great evenness in the lead itself. It feels like a pencil and works like a pencil and not clunky like a rectangular short stick, and therefore, it's much more controllable.

[CandAlArt]

C'mon & spend some dough, I miss envying your purchases everyone! I may pull the trigger tonight at Blick's great sale: 10% off just $79.00. That covers the shipping. I want the Artbars and Neocolor II, yes both. I really like the Reeves wax watersol's I already have. Can... no...longer...resist... Also want the flat Niji waterbrush, haven't seen that shape anywhere else. $$$$

Edit... aaaaah, I did it. Also got the small pack of Derwent Drawing, the earthy colors. Oh happy day.

[RebeccaJFleming]

Originally Posted by CandAlArt

C'mon & spend some dough, I miss envying your purchases everyone! I may pull the trigger tonight at Blick's great sale: 10% off just $79.00. That covers the shipping. I want the Artbars and Neocolor II, yes both. I really like the Reeves wax watersol's I already have. Can... no...longer...resist... Also want the flat Niji waterbrush, haven't seen that shape anywhere else. $$$$

Edit... aaaaah, I did it. Also got the small pack of Derwent Drawing, the earthy colors. Oh happy day.

Yay! The Neocolor 2s are great, and I think you'll enjoy the drawing pencils as well. PLEASE don't tempt me with sales, I have so many things in various shopping carts with online art supply stores that it would just about send me broke

However, at uni yesterday, I wandered into the campus bookshop again and continued raiding the discount tubs, scoring another bundle of Daler-Rowney Artist watercolours (they were still $5 for various sized bundles). So I now have 19 tubes (two are duplicates but I can sell them on eBay or keep them as spares) and lots of different colours. I believe they may have been old stock as some of them have separated in the tube, but I found that once I got rid of the oozy stuff or mixed it together by shoving a paper clip into it and jiggling it around, they work more or less fine. Plenty of them are colours that I don't have anything similar in my WN paints, so it was still a good grab.

Also, my tin of 10 Cretacolor AquaStics arrived yesterday, and half of the colours are wrong They've replaced my bright green with a dull olive green, and replaced my white and warm red with a bunch of browns I didn't want. I'm going to have to wait til my next big order and buy some of the colours I should have got from overseas, since I can't seem to find them here. The eBay seller has said she'll refund me about $4.50 but that probably won't cover the additional colours I'll have to get. All that aside, I do love the AquaStics for how they handle and layer. I had assumed that they would feel more waxy like crayons but they are a lot smoother like oil pastels. Colours are nice and dense.

I'm just so annoyed about the stuff-up with the colours. I was planning on doing a comparison between ArtBar, AquaStic and Necolor 2 but since I need a white for those tests, I won't be able to do it in the near future.

[RainySea]

Congrats on your order, Candace. . . sounds yummy. I'm not buying much right now until I get moved and settled into a new place.

[gakinme]

Candace, good buy there. Do tell if you like the Derwent Drawing set when you get it.

Rebecca, what a drag that they give you the wrong colors. But nice to hear you like the Aquastic.

Rainy, like you, I'm not buying more stuff for now until I know what I want to do in art next.

But I do like reading what you all get.