Decided to went against my practicality and follow my heart to purchase Faber Castell Polychromos set of 36 at Faber Castell SG outlet in Orchard. I was contemplating between 36 vs 60 and was leaning towards 60, but the price stopped me with difference of SGD $100+. And because I have never tried those pencils before, le fiance prevented me from getting 60 and hence, I got a set of 36 for SGD$114. *heart pain*
So here I am, deciding to try if my investment is worth it. And since I always work with black paper, I decided to try to see if the opacity of the colors works well with the black.
Sketching out Arabella:
I find my Mannequin pretty useless if you ever want to sketch flexible poses. I bought it at Overjoyed Singapore for about SGD$9.90. It is a bad buy. I should have gotten probably Art S. Buck Artist’s Model? Blame myself for not doing enough research and I didn’t see this model the last time I shopped on Overjoyed. My advice if you ever want to do serious sketching, do not ever get the wooden mannequin because you will be very frustrated with its stiff joints and you can hardly move the arms and legs around.
Now coming to use Faber Castell polychromos, I bought it in set of 36 which came in a metal tin casing.
And I decided to try on Arabella’s dress:
Looking at the range of 36 pencils, the color range is sufficient if you understand the concept of colors and are able to blend by yourself. Well, of course, it is always never enough for artists! We always love to be spoiled with colours because we just love working with many colours as possible. I use Dr. PH Martin’s Pen white ink with Nikko G nib as usual and somehow, I do not really do well with the white outline as I was aiming for faint lines and my hand shook alittle trying to make it as thin as possible.
As my usual routine, I scanned through the drawing and use photoshop to add some effects:
I am quite disappointed with myself this time round because the scan make the coloring looks too grainy. I probably will try to use blending tools next time to see if it works with Polychromos…I hope it works! <3
My thoughts on Polychromos
I prefer using them (oil-based) to the usual color pencils which is wax-based because the blending of colors is excellent as you cannot do that with normal Faber Castell classic color pencils. I was choosing between this and Prismacolors and decided on this based on reviews that Prismacolor pencils break very easily. However, for polychromos, they have SV coating which make them break resistant. I dropped one of the color pencils and it turns out fine with the tip still intact. And I like also like it that they are smudge-proof and water resistant.
Working on black paper, I am quite disappointed as I do not feel that Polychromos works really well with it because the colors are too transparent for my liking and I have to layer many times to get the opacity that I desired. So it feels really dull on paper and I cannot get the vibrancy I want despite using light colors to attempt to brighten up Arabella’s dress. The final drawing turns out to be grainy is due to the tooth of the paper so I will try smooth paper.
Colors included:
White, Cream, Light yellow glaze, Cadmium yellow, Dark chrome yellow, Cadmium orange, Dark cadmium orange, Pale geranium lake, Deep scarlet red, Middle cadmium red, Dark red, Magenta, Rose carmine, Middle purple pink, Mauve, Dark indigo, Helioblue-reddish, Ultramarine, Light ultramarine, Phthalo blue, Cobalt turqoise, Cobalt green, Dark phthalo green, Emerald green, Light green, Leaf green, Earth green yellowish, Pompeian red, Venetian red, Burnt ochre, Dark Naples ochre, Raw umber, Walnut brown, Warm grey V, Warm grey II, BlackI will try on white Bristol paper and see how it goes! <3
Faber-Castell Boutique
2 Orchard Turn,
#04-13 ION Orchard,
Singapore 238801
