Faber Castell Albrecht Dürer Watercolor Pencils

Faber Castell Albrecht Dürer pencils on tinted cardboard. Reference photograph found on google used and slightly modified.

So I went and got myself a set of proper color pencils. I was surprised to find out the art supply store I assumed is supposed to be biggest in our city only had Derwent pencils. And those aren't to my taste. Except for Derweent Drawing, which is soft and precice enough, but consists of only 24 colors - nice earth colors though, unfortunately only 12 color set available here, I have it, love it, but it's not enough - you can't color a sky blue sky with two dusky grayish blues, or fresh green grass with olive hued greens.

I had two options when setting out on my pencil quest, both water color pencils. Faber Castell Albrecht Dürer and Caran D'Ache Supracolor. Latter wasn't available, so I eventually got the Faber Castell ones - fortunately available at a big book store.

Now the logic behind the colors chosen for each set is beyond me. What do people use pencils for? I mean, who needs 4 purplish blues and only one real blue? Finally the 24 color set seemed to give enough usable colors, a set which I then broadened with 6 additional pencils I bought separately (two earthy greens, one flesh pink, one blue and two browns).

I've been playing with my pencils now and quite honestly love them! Though I haven't yet tried them on white paper. First started on black paper, then did the above fjord on grayish tinted paper. Nice change to be building up the colors with a dark base. Haven't yet tried out the watercolor side of these pencils - one step at a time.

Did some horse studies the other day (with some old color pencil). The one above is made without looking at a reference. I concluded it wasn't right, got Ernest Thompson Seton's Art Anatomy of Animals and checked what went wrong, hence the below "study".

This morning I woke up too early, couldn't sleep anymore. So first tried out if I could draw a hoopoe. I guess I kind of can...but not too happy. Have to give it another try to be completely happy.

Then Niuniu...without watching the model. She gets uncomfortable if I draw live, so started this off "out of memory". It's unfinished still. Work in progress. We'll see, when I'll finish it.