A Seal of Approval

Trying out those coloured pencils: Faber-Castell Polychromos

Polychromos pencils on cartridge paper, copyright 2015 Alison Moon Illustration

So, this week, having got a lovely set of Faber-Castell polychromos water resistant pencils for Christmas, I finally found that I had the time to actually give them a go. So I did, and had enormous fun while doing so.

And the first thing I noticed? They were so easy to blend, and it was literally twenty minutes into working before I realised that I had to sharpen them again. I worked in layers with this piece, and used Zest-It solvent to blend, which worked very well over the 200gsm cartridge paper I used. I was quite happy to find that there was no paper discoloration where the solvent bled as well.

In terms of smudging, I noticed that there was a little issue with the dark colours on the seal's markings. I found that the pigment tended to cling to the skin of my palm, but it certainly wasn't anything major and was easily solved with a little tracing paper.

Once all the colour was layered as needed, I finished up the details with a titanium white Liquitex marker, which I found that did a nice job of pushing back the colour where the light hit the animal's fur.

So, Overall, it was a lovely experience - definitely one that I'll be using again.