Tuesday 24 August 2010

Caran d'Ache Luminance 6901

Today I bought 11 Caran d'Ache Luminance coloured pencils to test them. They are so expensive and I wanted to know if it's worth all the money. I bought really soft colours... almost whites, a light blue and a wonderful shade of Olive Brown. My favourites are Olive Brown 10% and Raw umber 10%. Very usable. I found them very easy to blend and they also mix well (blue and yellow actually make green, which isn't always the case). The leads are soft and give a nice smooth, rich colour. On the other hand, making a thin transparent layer was easy too which is good when you have to put on many layers. Downside is that you can't read well the silver colour numbers, but that's just a little thing (although it is a bit frustrating when you use many similar colours at the same time). I didn't test them in combination with my Faber-Castells or Prismacolors yet. But I'm really looking forward to it.On the Caran d'Ache website is a very nice colour-chart it's just a bit too small for me. I wish they had put the chart there that you can see in the photo here, at the start of this blog (click the photo to see it larger). I'll have to see how many colours are really different and usable in botanical art. €3,50 ($3.33 or £2.65) is really a lot of money to spend on one pencil. So that huge tin must be a really generous gift for Christmas or maybe I'll limit my wishlist to just a few more colours. I'm really curious about the greens and the black.....

6 comments:

A Brush with Color said...

Ooooh--these look awesome, Sigrid! I could "play" in art supply stores all day long...I even like looking at all the things I don't use--it's just fun.

Sigrid Frensen said...

I know what you mean ;)

Anonymous said...

ha, I will try out my thought, your post give me some good ideas, it's really amazing, thanks.

- Norman

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Parisbreakfasts said...

show us yr chubby cheeks please...
merci
carolg

Kaveri Singh said...

Hi Sigrid I love this it is so you. You captured the essence of your work , delicate, fragile, beautiful drawings