Derwent Coloursoft

The most exciting thing that has happened to me this week was the arrival of my fist set of Derwent colour pencils. I've been doing some research on the internet, and it seems that two of the most popular brands that illustrators use are Derwent and Prismacolor. Up until the last moment I was tempted by the Prismacolor, but when reading through the Amazon feedback, Derwent won hands down, so I decided to give them a try first. And I haven't been disappointed!

I bought a set of 24... not a huge amount but enough to get started. And they're not called coloursoft for nothing: they are incredibly gentle and a little like pastels. I found the technique was somewhat different from the bog-standard pencils I have been using up until now, and at one point I almost felt as if I were sculpting clay, adding layer of colour over layer and almost molding it to suit the drawing.

The wooden casing of the pencils is round and slightly chunkier than the pencils I'm accustomed to using, and I found them very comfortable to handle. 

I had read that they need constant sharpening and that you get some blooming if you press too hard while blending colours, but as I work with very soft strokes on the whole, I haven't as yet had either of these problems. Finally the colours themselves are extremely vibrant which has both advantages and disadvantages. For me the biggest challenge was trying to use the light blue (Blue C330) for shading on a face: only the lightest of light strokes works as with too much pressure the blue threatens to take over as the main colour. 

Here are a couple of tips that regarding colour pencils that I have found useful and would like to pass on!

1) Wash hands frequently. Just reaching up to touch your face can lead to oily disaster on good sketching paper, so try to keep those fingers clean. If you're lazy like me, and getting up to wash your hands every 20 minutes is a pain, buy some PH neutral baby-wipes, and use them to wipe your fingers on occasionally. But the best advice is to try and not touch the paper at all unless necessary.

2) It's not a good idea to sketch on a flat surface as this will inevitably lead to bad posture, cricks in necks and general achy-ness. You can buy a table-easel or just use a light-weight board and prop it against the table at a 45* angle.

3) Finally make sure that the surface you work on is hard and not soft as you'll find the colour does not go on a smoothly if there's too much give behind your paper. This is because the pigment can't get into the pours of the paper, and instead just lies on the top. This is especially true if you are using soft pencils like Derwent Coloursoft!

hard surface

Do you have any advice and tips on colour pencils you'd like to share! Comments are always appreciated!