Discovering Coloured Pencils

Coloured pencils are the most important painting tool that children learn to use at an early age.

There are different types, from inexpensive school pencils to professional artist pencils, which are more expensive but have a higher pigment content.

In this post, you'll find a brief description of this wonderful tool, including its components and types, along with tips on how to choose the ones best suited to your needs.

The components of coloured pencils

Coloured pencils essentially consist of two main components: the lead (which in turn consists of binders and pigments) and the wooden casing.

The lead

The lead is the core of the coloured pencil and consists of a mixture of pigments (which give the colour), a binding agent (wax or oil) and a number of additives such as fillers and additives that facilitate use and durability.

The diameter of the lead can vary between 3 mm and 5 mm. A good coloured pencil is characterised by the amount of pigment it contains (the more pigment, the more colour is transferred to the paper and the better the result) and by the positioning of the lead within the outer casing: to protect the lead and make the pencil easy to sharpen, the lead must be positioned exactly in the centre of the casing.

The pigments

Pigments are powders that give the pencil its colour.

Normal colours use both absorbent pigments from natural raw materials and pigments produced in the laboratory (for example, as a substitute for harmful substances such as cadmium, which was previously used to produce yellow, orange or red).

In pencils with metallic effects, the leads may contain both metallic pigments and mica powder, which give the lead its light-reflecting metallic effect.

The binder

The second important component of coloured pencils is the binder, which holds the pigment together to form the lead. This binder consists of two components, one oily and one waxy, and depending on which component predominates, the finished pencil is described as oil-based or wax-based.

• The oil-based binder makes the lead harder, which makes the pencil better suited for precise details and allows multiple layers of colour to be applied. Faber-Castell Polychromos and Caran d'Ache Pablo pencils are two examples of this type of pencil.

• The wax-based binder, on the other hand, gives the lead a softer appearance and promotes the application of pigment to the paper with higher saturation. Thanks to its creaminess, more even colour gradients can be achieved with fewer layers of colour. Caran d'Ache Luminance and Prismacolor Premier pencils are wax-based.

  
  

The body

The outer shell, also known as the ‘body’, serves to protect the lead and enable us to apply the pigment it contains. The material most commonly used to make the body is cedar wood, which is very easy to work with but also quite expensive. This material is then finished with a water-based varnish that reflects the colour of the lead and onto which further information such as the brand, colour name, number, etc. is engraved.

How to recognise high-quality coloured pencils

The most important parameters for determining the quality of a coloured pencil are:

Pigment-binder ratio

The higher the pigment content, the better the quality of the pencil. Professional pencils or artist pencils such as Faber-Castell Polychromos or Caran d'Ache Luminance usually have a higher pigmentation than normal school pencils.

 

Perfectly centred lead

A lead positioned in the centre of the pencil is optimally protected by the coating and offers greater stability during use. In addition, the central positioning allows for very sharp points to be achieved when sharpening.

Lightfastness

This is one of the key aspects to consider when purchasing art materials, especially when planning to sell your work.

In general, pencils (and all art materials containing pigments) tend to fade over time when exposed to light, so it's very important to use materials that guarantee a certain degree of resistance to direct light.

Professional artist pencils are typically tested using various methods to verify the pigment's resistance to prolonged exposure to sunlight, ensuring that the work remains unchanged over time.

The most commonly used methods are:

Blue Wool Scale

With this method, the degree of fading of the individual colours after six months of exposure to sunlight is compared with a wool sample that has different shades of blue and is called a Textile Fading Card. Depending on the degree and speed at which the colour begins to fade, the colour is assigned a classification ranging from BW1 (very poor lightfastness, rapid fading) to BW8 (very good lightfastness, slow fading or no fading).

ASTM D6901

This method analyses the degree of fading of individual colours by subjecting them to two separate tests (one with natural light exposure through glass and the other in a laboratory-simulated environment where the colours are tested for UV resistance under specific conditions). The results are then scientifically evaluated and, depending on the degree of fading, a classification from LV1 (excellent light resistance) to LV V (very poor light resistance) is assigned.

Projects in which pencils with high lightfastness were used can remain unchanged for 100 years with minimal or no changes in luminosity when exposed to light under museum conditions.

Further information on this topic can be found in the post by Sarah Renae Clark in which the individual methods are explained in detail.

How many types of coloured pencils are there?

A first categorisation is based on the degree of pigmentation and the way in which the materials have been processed into school pencils and artist pencils: the former are less expensive, less pigmented, easier to process, made from lower-quality materials and are not tested for lightfastness.

A second classification can be made based on the type of binder used to manufacture the leads. In this case, there are wax-based pencils (softer) and oil-based pencils (harder, but excellent for drawing details, for example).

A third type are pencils that can achieve a special effect. These include, for example, metallic pens that contain metal pigments, neon pens and rainbow pens (pens whose refill contains several colours).

A final classification can be made based on their use. There are pencils that can only be used dry, watercolour pencils (whose colour dissolves on contact with water) and pastel pencils (in this case, these are pastel colours that can be used like pencils).

I hope you enjoyed this article and that it has given you a better understanding of some important aspects of using pencils.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this post, please leave a ‘like’, a comment, and don't forget to follow me on social media.

Laura