Tag: best colored pencils

Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils review

In this article you’ll find information about Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils and my experience using them on various drawing papers. I’m not an affiliate and I write reviews of art supplies I actually use in my drawings. Below you’ll find the Polychromos lightfastness ratings as well as some of my colored pencil drawings made with these colored pencils.

Properties

Lightfastness: most colors are lightfast/very good to excellent
Durability: excellent

Pigment saturation: very vivid/ excellent

Oil-based
Softness: medium softness/ very good

polychromos colored pencil drawing

Faber-Castell polychromos colored pencils set

These colored pencils never break on me. Their durability, color saturation and lighfastness are consistent. Easy to sharpen, Polychromos have a range of beautiful colors with some pinks and purples that have excellent lightfastness ratings, which is difficult to find in other brands, especially in Prismacolor Premier.

Because they are not very soft, these colored pencils layer nicely and require minimal colored pencil blending. The downside is that you’ve got to find the right paper working with them. Because they are oil-based, they mix and blend more like soft pastels, meaning that the paper should have some texture to adhere the pencils to. And I find that when I work on uart paper, 800 grade or Canson pastel paper, Polychromos impress me a lot more. They are great for detailed work and blend on their own working on slightly textured paper like Bristol Vellum. These colored pencils tend to glide off of smooth paper like Bristol smooth and seem to need more layering to develop contrast.

While I prefer Luminance and Pablo colored pencils, the Polychromos’ durability and excellent lightfastness make me a fan to draw the details in my art.

innocence by veronica winters_colored pencil drawing
Innocence, Polychromos on 9×12 koh-i-noor bristol vellum drawing paper. In this drawing I didn’t do much blending. The colors blended on their own via crosshatching and overlapping.

veronica winters colored pencil
Nymph, colored pencil on UART paper,800grit, 9×12 inches

UArt sanded art paper and Polychromos is the best combination in my view. UArt is designed for pastel drawing and its surface feels like sand paper. Therefore if you use softer colored pencils on it, it will “eat” your soft colored pencils and blending would require solvents. 800 grade is the finest surface and is suitable for colored pencil drawing with Polychromos or other harder colored pencils like Pablo or Koh-i-Noor.

nicaraguan boy colored pencil drawing veronica winters

Because oil-based Polychromos act like pastels, the drawing process is similar to pastel painting in layers. It’s blocking in large areas in dark colors and then adding the lighter ones on top.

Nicaraguan boy colored pencil drawing by m-veronica-winters-colored-pencil
Nicaraguan boy, 9×12 inches, lightfast colored pencils on UART paper, in private collection

Faber-Castell Polychromos lightfastness rating chart

polychromos_lightfastness ratings

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