Supra Apple

In my two previous blog posts I showed what I have been sketching with each of my pencil sets so as to compare apples to apples. First was the Crayola classroom grade pencils compared with artist grade CdA Museum pencils. Next was the apple using Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer artist grade pencils. This post discusses the Caran D'Ache Supracolor II soft pencils.

CdA Supracolor II swatches

Column 1, light pressure

Column 2, heavy pressure

each swatch stroked once with waterbrush

Column 3, waterbrush

stroked over lead and applied to paper

The Supracolor II watercolor pencil line is the next step down in price from CdA Museum Aquarelle pencils. They are still described as professional grade pencils, with a 3.7mm core (lead). The Supracolor II (soft) pencils are listed by Dick Blick as sets or as individual pencils. I bought a set of twelve from eBay for $17. At Dick Blick, the price for a set of 12 is comparable to the price for a 12 set of Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer pencils, although individual pencils are priced differently.  I find most 12 pencil sets to include only one yellow tone, in the  case of Supracolor II that is Canary Yellow, which looks to be a warm tone yellow to me. I bought four individual pencils from Blick to give me more options in primary triads and another green tone.

Comparison of: 

top- CdA Museum Aquarelle

bottom- CdA Supracolor II soft

both color 220, grass green

In the swatches, I included the Grass Green #220 from the CdA Museum Aquarelle pencil, just to get a feel for the increase in pigment laid down by the creamier Museum pencils.

Apple using CdA Supracolor II soft pencils.
Triad used: 025 Canary Yellow, 160 Cobalt Blue, 090 Purple

When sketching the Kanzi apple, I tried to choose my triad based on similarity to the triads I used in the previous sets, a magenta/cyan/yellow triad. In the image at left, above the swatch of the triad, I tested the 160 Cobalt Blue against three red tones from my set to see which combination gave me the clearest purple. All of the choices looked a little off with this set, but I chose 090 purple pencil to represent magenta and 025 Canary yellow. The yellow "lenticles" in the apple were added using Sanford Verithin dry pencil before the watercolor pencil layers were laid down. I used multiple light layers of pencil, usually starting with yellow, then magenta in red areas and blue then magenta then yellow for the stem region.

Apples to Apples:
top, F-C Albrecht Durer
bottom, CdA Supracolor II

I sketched the same apple on the same day using first the Albrecht Durer (top in the image at left), then the Supracolor II pencils (bottom apple). When viewed next to each other, the Albrecht apple is darker in pigment than the Supracolor apple, but both were less intense than the Museum apple. This result corresponds to my tactile impression that the Museum is the creamiest, the Albrecht harder and stickier but still richer in pigment when layered down than the Supracolor II. The cast shadow using the Supra II triad is darker than the Albrecht apple, maybe because of the bluer tone.

You may think I have enough Caran D'Ache watercolor pencils, but oh no! When trolling eBay one day I found a new set of Supracolor I pencils and I couldn't help myself!! But that will wait for another blog post.