A Coloring Adventure: Blackwing Colors Pencils Review

Blackwing is known for their awesome brand of graphite pencils, the Palomino Blackwing, and when I found out they had coloring pencils as well, I definitely wanted to try them. And when Mishka from Bureau Direct kindly offered this set for review I was absolutely thrilled to have that chance! Thank you again! They are absolutely a pleasure to color with. The packaging is very swanky, too.  It's a beautiful sleek and classy design in heavy cardboard,soft matte black finish and a magnetic closure. You can see the pencils through the PVC window which is convenient so you can see which colors are in there.

Next to reading about Blackwing's story, you can read the basic information about the pencils from the back of the box. The Blackwing Colors set (MRSP 30£) consist of 12 smooth coloring pencils made in Japan. Crafted using Genuine Incense-cedar in a comfortable semi-hexagonal shape with a smooth Japanese wax coloring base. Also every sale benefits music & arts education in schools, which is very cool of them to do so. 

When you open the box, the inside design has an elegant harlequin motive and the pencils are cushioned in soft foam. There is also a protective see through plastic cover placed over the pencils (not pictured), which is easily removable and put back into place to keep your pencils in place (or as an extra barrier) if you choose to carry the box around. I like to foam cushion because it also protects your pencil tips from bumping against the side of the box and thus blunting them if you had just sharpened your pencils. That's a nice eye for detail there!

The pencils are solid colors with a silver capped end and the name "blackwing-colors" are engraved in silver as well. The only thing lacking are the names of the colors! You do have your ROYBGIV colors in the set. The colors are red, orange, pink, yellow, dark green, light green, light blue, dark blue, brown, purple, black and a fun silver color, which sets this set apart from other standard 12 pencil color sets which often offer white. If you're coloring in a low lit room, it might be hard to tell apart the darker tones, though. When testing these out one evening on my couch I thought the purple one was a darker brown one for sure and seeing my work the next morning, I discovered the purple and brown do go together nicely as well ;) I tested them in a coloring book.

They are quite comfortable in hand. I do prefer the hexagonal shape because it prevents them rolling off my desk like the fully round pencils often do. On the subject of blending, I often use a white pencil or a colorless blender to burnish/smooth out the pencil strokes. But you can also use lighter colors in this set to get that same effect. I've done that with the color hues above. I used the lightest hues to blend the colors together to get a creamy blended effect. You can get awesome shade effects like this too, without dulling down the color which you sometimes can do if you blend with a white pencil. So the colors brightly pop out here!

The pencils are in performance quite like the Derwent artist pencils, which are also wax based and super soft in use. Though with the Derwents you do have a wider variety of colors to choose from. This is a fixed set and no open stock available but you could use wax based pencils from other brands and intermix them if you would like wider range in colors. 

The set on its own has a great variety of colors you can easily and smoothly mix them together to create different hues. The unique silver color adds a bit of freshness to the mix, which I quite like! 

With the pricing of 30£ for this set, it's not cheap, but you do get a nice artist grade coloring set of a well known brand in the pencil industry. It has classy packaging and sleek design. You're also supporting the arts education with purchasing this set. What's not to like?  

Also when you sign up for Bureau Direct's newsletter, you will receive a 10% discount code in your inbox every month. Just FYI :)

If you are still shopping for a Christmas gift for that creative friend of yours, this would definitely make a great one!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

namasté

(disclaimer: I got this item free of charge for review purposes and was not monetarily compensated. All opinions stated here are my own and there are no affiliate links.) 

Inky goodness: J. Herbin 1670 Caroube de Chypre

Not a pens and ink post this week, but a focus on just the ink this Wednesday! A little while ago Mishka from Bureau Direct kindly sent me a sample vial of the coming ink in the anniversary line of J. Herbin 1670 Caroube De Chypre, which is due for release on Bastille Day, July 14th. So I'm lucky that I got a sample to try it before the release date and I finally had the time to play around with the shimmery ink a little and showing you some results today. Thanks so much again, Mishka!

J. Herbin Caroube de Chypre on with a waterman 12 Ideal nib #2 on Muji dot grid notebook paper. The ink performs well on smooth and fountain pen friendly ink paper like the above. I dipped my pen in the vial to write and then added some splatters. There is a lot of shimmery action going on there, which I really like. And the deep chocolate brown base color shows off the gold shimmer well.

I used my Pelikan 200 Cognac with a M italic ground nib for more writing and testing in my written meditation journal. The ink holds up pretty well on Clairefontaine paper as well. But sadly the shimmer doesn't show through as much as with dipping the pen in the ink vial and writing with it. It showed some shimmer the first few lines when I wrote with it.

As you can see in the above picture the first few sentences has the gold shimmer, but later on there is little shimmer. I had to shake the pen a few time to get some of the shimmer flowing into the writing again. And it does pick up a little, but not a lot.

You can see that my pelikan does hold a lot of shimmer in the barrel, so it might be that the combo of this pen and ink doesn't allow the shimmer to shine though like it deserves. The feed doesn't have a lot of shimmer on it and I think herein lies the problem.

For the shimmer to really shine though, I think you need a pen with less fins in the feed, like a vintage pen with a smooth feed or a really wet writing pen. I discovered that too with the diamine shimmering inks, though those inks have a lot more shimmer in them than the J. Herbin 1670 series.  I'll be experimenting with this ink in other pens when I get the chance (ie when I get a full bottle, my sample is nearly depleted). But for now I also wanted to show you some ink wash artwork I did. 

I stamped the dip pen stamp from Viva Las Vegas Stamps with versamark ink on smooth white glossy paper and embossed it with clear embossing powder. Then I wrote Caroube de Chypre, J. Herbin 1670 with a versamark embossing pen and embossed that with clear embossing too. I took a small paint brush and a little bit of water and started to wash the ink from top to bottom over the embossed parts. 

The embossed parts work as a resist, so the image shows up through clearly and you can wipe excess drops of ink on the embossed parts away. When the image was dry I took my brush, dipped it in the water a bit and spattered over it. I let that dry and then I dipped the brush in the ink vial and spattered non diluted ink over it.

This is the end result, a beautiful chocolate brown shimmery gold speckled ink wash! I'm going to do some experimentation on watercolor paper like I did with the Diamine shimmery inks, but I definitely love the smooth glossy look this paper has. I'm also loving this embossing ink resist technique a lot and will incorporate them more in inky goodness posts :) 

More reviews with lush pictures on Caroube de Chypre can be found at The Clumsypenman and Gourmetpens. And if you do not want to miss out on this ink when this gets released in July, why not subscribe yourself to Stationery Wednesday newsletter and blog from Bureau Direct for more info and a 10% discount code being distributed weekly!

Disclaimer: this sample was sent to me free of charge for review purposes. All opinions are my own and there are no affiliate links. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

namasté