Hi, Hipkit, I don’t think I’ve posted in CP before either. I use a really lot of colored pencils in my work, but I use them over a watermedia underpainting. I have quite a few things posted in Watermedia.
I don’t have any Coloursoft (yet) but I have a lot of Derwent Drawing. They are some of my favorite pencils, but they are very muted. You would be suprised at how many little touches of intense color you find in, say, a black or brown cat. Local color doesn’t mean anything, it’s reflected and refracted color that makes it look real. You can save a lot of money in the long run by just buying the colors you want from open stock. They may cost more per pencil, but you save a fortune by not buying all those useless colors in a set. You can also mix and match to get the best colors from each brand- I’ve never found any that wouldn’t work together. I have mostly Polychromos, Luminance, Inktense (not very lightfast, only suitable for sketching and wet underpainting), and a few of nearly every other kind. You spend less money at one time on a few carefully chosen colors. Imagine how much more mileage you would get out of a dozen carefully chosen, hand picked colors, than from a set that only had a few you needed.
-Floyd

salemskye, I’d read that these were “fur and feather” pencils considered good for animal drawing. Is Derwent stretching the truth in their blue wool scale? They rate this high on the scale of lightfastness; but I know that manufacturer’s own ratings can’t always be trusted.

I think Derwent overall are fairly optimistic about the lightfastness of their pencils – not to say they aren’t good, they are and they do often acknowledge that pinks and pale lilacs are the worst offenders. From a few years of discussing pencils and lightfastness, WC members have carried out their own tests and often find that a lot of the Derwent ranges have fugitive colours.

The best lightfastness seem to be Caran d’Ache Luminance range but you pay dearly for that.

I remember a WC member saying that the Drawing range were particularly poor on lightfastness – but they are still artist quality, still lightfast to a degree and great fun to use.

If you click on my blog link, and look under Coloured pencils you’ll get swatches and pencil info – hope that’s of some help.

One word of warning: the Drawings can feel much harder than the Coloursofts (never ever believe anything about “creaminess” of pencils) but well-sharpened they are very nice indeed. You might find some useful feline hues in the Derwent Artists range too; technically they aren’t very far from the Drawings.

Heikki

I believe it the the graphitints that have very poor lightfastness.

Yes, that’s true.

The derwent drawing range are lightfast.

They are lightfast but the ratings go from poor to good lightfastness.

I’ve got a nice box of Derwent Coloursofts, which are very nice but a little bit ‘crumbly’, I find. I’ve never used the Derwent Drawing pencils though. Let us know how you get on with them.

Hallo Margreet! (Leuk om weer eens Nederlands te spreken) – What a beautiful tiger! Can I ask which black paper you use? I bought some Canson and found it can only take a limited amount of layers but maybe I’m doing things wrong

Yes, that’s true.

They are lightfast but the ratings go from poor to good lightfastness.

According to Derwent, 23 of the 24 in the Drawing set have BW8 lightfastness, except for Ink Blue, which is 7. All the other derwent coloured pencils have poor to good lightfastness but not these.

I am aware of that but as I said, I remember someone on WC doing a window test of the Drawing pencils and they came out with very poor results.

I am not sure but I think it were Graphitints that were tested and faded only after few days IIRC, I may be wrong though.

I also found this…

http://rozwoundup.typepad.com/roz_wound_up/2009/03/audible-sigh-of-relief-derwent-drawing-lightfast-test.html