Polychromos Artist Color Pencils – Faber-Castell

The Polychromos artists’ colour pencils have extremely break-resistant leads that are both water-resistant and smudge-proof and suspended in an oil-based binder.

The leads are bound to a casing of Californian cedarwood with a secural bonding process (SV) to resist breakage while providing sharp, fine lines and permanent, rich colour. The pencils are pre-sharpened. The pencils have exceptional covering power, though it will also sharpen to a fine point for detailed work. The vivid colours and optimal paintability will impress, along with many other advantages valued by professional artists.

Every pencil contains a lightfastness (LF) (light resistance) rating, as follows:

• *** very good (100+ years)
•   ** good
•     * reasonable

Examples of use:

A:  Blocks of rich colour: To create blocks of intense colour, hold the pencil in an almost vertical position and press down hard on the paper.

B:  Shading: To colour an area evenly, hold the pencil at a very shallow angle, and only press down lightly on the paper. The structure of the paper will be visible, while individual strokes will not.

C:  Hatching and crosshatching: Drawing many lines alongside each other will create an area of colour, which can be intensified by repeatedly overlaying lines at different angles.

D:  From light to dark: Light colours are transparent, while dark colours provide coverage. Superimposing layers of colour increase the brilliance and vividness of the colours.

E:  Brush painting: To create even areas of colour, paint over the strokes made with Polychromos artists’ colour pencils using a bristle brush and paraffin oil (baby oil or salad oil). Oil paints also dissolve the artists’ colour pencils, which is why they are often used to draw preparatory sketches for oil paintings. The lines subsequently dissolve when they are painted over.

F:  Painting onto coloured backgrounds: A coloured background can result in very attractive changes to the characters of colours.

G: Working on different surfaces: Polychromos colour pencils adhere to many rough surfaces, such as paper, cardboard, wood, stone, leather and metal.

Fixing  – Polychromos artists’ colour pencils are permanent, adhere firmly to their background, and do not require fixing. Fixing could cause lower layers of colour to bleed through to the surface.