A Coloring Adventure: Faber Castell Polychromos review

In episode 8 of Art Supply Posse podcast Color Me Pencil the subject of, you guessed it, coloring pencils were discussed. As always it was a fun, chatty episode. I know the goal of their podcasts is to be inspired to use your own stash more, but through a comment in the episode - Ana of The Well Appointed Desk said in the podcast that these polychromos were on "time-out" for her at the moment- I got curious to know as to why that is and wanted to try them out. So I got a few of them myself when I was at Flockstra in Groningen (Pricing was 1,80€ open stock which was not bad at all!) and I picked out a series of blue hues to experiment with. 

At first glance and test they behaved a lot like my Derwent Artists Pencils, which are waxed based. The polychromos are oil based pencils though and do not have the "wax-bloom" problem most wax pencils have. My vintage Derwents do not have this problem either, but it's how you use your pencils that can create that effect. 
I love the fact they have a solid color barrel, like my vintage derwents have. Also, I know this is for the scanning purposes of the product in retail, but I really dislike the fact there are bar-code stickers on them. if you place bar-code stickers on them, do it on the back so you don't have the sticky substance on your fingers while you are coloring when you remove them from the front. Ok, rant over. And yes, at the end the bar-code stickers were removed as was sticky residue. Time to give them a proper testing.

At Flockstra I also picked up a Paint-On mixed media A5 pad from Clairefontaine which I wanted to try out. It's a sturdy 250 gms white card stock and I'm excited to try this paper with different media's to see how it holds up. For pencils it's also great, not too toothy, just the right amount of texture to build some color on. I drew a fantasy Zentangle Rose with my Pentel Tradio Pulaman pen and proceeded to color it in. You can really do some wonderful shading and blending with these polychromos for sure! I've created some in between blue hues by overlaying lighter shades on a darker surface and the lighter overlay does pop out. Also there is minimal smear and the pencil tips have not broken once (I applied smooth and even pressure while coloring).

And the end result was this. The colors really blend nicely and you can see how the colors pop! I think I am smitten! Also you can see how much of the color pencil I exactly used for this piece, I added several layers and did not sharpen them once. I'm sure they will last me a long time!

Now I already have a full set of Derwent Artist pencils which I am very happy with (you can see my Coloring adventure with them here) so I won't be getting a full set of these polychromos, but I could not resist getting a few more colors on my way back home via Groningen.

I picked up some green hues and colored this page from Tara McPherson's Somewhere under the Rainbow coloring book. I made copies of images of this book because I love the images so much I would like to have a chance of coloring them more than once. This was printed on HP 100gms laser printer paper. Though I preferred the 250 Paint On paper, the pencils held up good here too. Looks like my turquoise hues finally need to get sharpened :) 

Hope this review was useful for you and be of help for you in your own coloring adventures :) 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

namasté

Zenspirational doodles inspired by Joanne Fink

A while back I received this wonderful care package from my friend Mel and her son Jakob. And at a weekend away a little while ago, I got to try my hand this wonderful activity book "Zenspirations Dangle Designs; expanded workbook edition".

I wanted to make a dangle border/top design as you see on the workbook cover.

As pictures say more than words, I will show you my zenspiration creation process step by step:

My top 5 tools for #zentangle activities are 1) mechanic pencil 0.5 point 2) steadtler micron liners 3) pilot kaküno fountainpen M nib with namiki black cartdridge 4) sakura pigment liners 5) sakura black gelly rol. I made a few rough sketches with pencil and then just started doodling away with the fineliners. 

You can make some basic shapes and tangle/doodle in the downward pillars/sock dangles. I used a really fine 0.05 micron steadtler fine liner for the really detailed doodles.

I got inspiration from the book to do the 'tops' and 'ends' but thinking up some fun patterns/designs yourself is all part of the wonderful creative process.

Got the line work done! And the fun thing is I had no idea it would turn out like this when I started. It all happened gradually without having to think too much about it. Though I like the black and white version, I did want to see what it would look like with some color. Before I used the water colors, I erased all the pencil lining with a soft eraser so the graphite would not mix with the colors. 

I used my caran d'ache prismalo aquarelle pencils and a pentel water brush to color it in. I decided to leave the insides of the doodles and columns white and keep a simple color contrast on top while having a nice color gradient on the bottom. Red in between the columns and yellow on the bottom. Used the water brush to make them blend and it became orange where the two colors meet. 

The finished piece. I ended up using the contrasting colors in the smaller dangle 'endings' to make it 'complete'. I'm quite pleased with the end result. I love how the colors make the dangles pop out more. 

NB I did find out though that the black cartridge in my Pilot kaküno fountain pen was not entirely water proof. But when dried and mixed with the colors, it looks like shading so the piece wasn't completely ruined. So a fair warning; if you do end up using watercolors, make sure you work with completely water proof liners/ink if you don't want the bleed/blend through happening.  

Inspired and enthused? See Joanne Fink's blog for more inspiration! Also the book is being translated to a few different languages! As she would love to hear from people all over the world, who tried the book or their hand at zenspirations, so be sure to leave a comment on her The Global Connection blogpost :) 

Thanks for stopping by.

namaste.