Soft Black Pencils - the search for a Prismacolor alternative

If you've watched any drawing tutorials or car design sketchers on youtube you'll probably have heard about black Prismacolor pencils. I tried some a year or so ago and was delighted with the smooth waxyness, the lack of sheen, and the rich tones I could get with them - but here in the UK they weren't easy to find. You need to resort to mail order from places like http://www.1buy1pencils.co.uk. Sometimes these suppliers run out of stock and I've read that the pencil quality dropped off a bit after they moved to a different manufacturer. So what options are there for UK sketchers who like soft black pencils? Are there any others as good as the Prismacolor? I ordered a selection (mostly from http://www.pencils4artists.co.uk) and tried to find out…

PRISMACOLOR 935 - not too hard, not too soft, not too waxy, not too dry. Smudgeproof. Just about perfect!
CARAN d'ACHE Luminance 6901 - a tiny bit less waxy than the Prismacolor but gives an almost identical range of tones.
CRETACOLOR Nero Soft - Much drier - more like a graphite pencil but still gives deep blacks with little pressure. Hardness will probably mean it keeps its point well. It's a slightly warm black and does smudge a little.
FABER CASTELL Pitt Oil Base Soft - A little less waxy and a tiny bit lighter but very close to the Prismacolor.
LYRA Rembrandt Polycolor - Slightly slimmer than the others which - I find very comfortable. A little less waxy than the Prismacolor and it doesn't give such rich blacks.
DERWENT Coloursoft C650 - Less waxy than the Prismacolor but still gives a good range of tones. Again a slightly warm brownish black.
LYRA Color Giant 3940099 & Super Ferby - Chunky pencils. Too hard and slightly brown. It's a shame that companies mess around with the formulas. I have a stub of the old 9305 Color Giant which is every bit as good as the Prismacolor - perhaps even better - with rich, pure blacks  and great softness. Ho hum.
STABILO Trio - Chunky and triangular. Available from Staples office supplies. Very similar range and feel to Prismacolor but ever so slightly warmer.

And a couple of others that are a bit more extreme than the Prismacolor…
STAEDTLER Lumocolor - Permanent and waterproof. It's incredibly soft and waxy - almost like a wax crayon or Chinagraph but lovely and smooth. Could be great for large gestural sketches or even sketching in the rain! Be prepared for lots of sharpening though. Bit of sheen and does smudge a little.
CONTÉ Pierre Noire 2B - a sort of Conté crayon in pencil form. Dry like charcoal rather than waxy. Lovely sooty blacks, completely matt. As you'd expect, it does smudge.

CONCLUSION: If you find yourself out in the wilds without a Prismacolor and there's an art store nearby you might find the Caran d'Ache or Faber Castell makes an excellent replacement. The Cretacolor, Derwent and Stabilo are very close seconds and all very nice to draw with.

Although the Staedtler Lumocolor and Conté don't fit into the wax pencil category they are still definitely worth a look as they make some lovely marks.

Lastly, I ought to mention my new KUM automatic long point sharpener. It's a two-stage sharpener which sharpens first the wood, then the lead, and it's done a grand job of sharpening all of the above pencils (except the chunky ones) - even the very soft and brittle ones which my old sharpener used to snap the leads in. It might be down to new blades but I think sharpening the wood first is a good idea as you can then go very delicately when you come to the lead itself. My model also has a couple of small holes in the sides for sharpening clutch pencil leads (2mm and 3mm I think)

Hope that helps! Let me know your thoughts.

The Search for the Ultimate Drawing Pencil!

Life would be so easy if I just knew which pencil to draw with. But on the other hand I do rather enjoy browsing the shelves of stationery shops, taking a punt on a pen or pencil that I haven't used before, wondering if it will be 'the one'. I've amassed quite a few drawing implements by now - and it's made packing my bag harder. So here's an attempt to make sense of my pen pots and put them into some sort of order.

The pencils fall into three categories…
Graphite - Your standard pencil. Glide well, easy to erase but quite shiny on the paper (which doesn't always scan well).
Wax - Like colouring pencils. Smooth to draw with, they're quite smudge-resistant (but harder to erase)
Charcoal - Much drier, occasionally even scratchy but making rich, sooty blacks, without any sheen.

GRAPHITE
CONTÉ 601- always a shade darker than STAEDTLER (a 2B is more like a 3B). I have an old hexagonal 3B that was quite the best pencil I've ever used. Smooth as anything and easy to hold and sharpen. It seems to have been replaced with round pencils which are drier and don't sharpen so well. The FABER CASTELLs and STAEDTLERs are better.
FABER CASTELL 9000 - always shade lighter than STAEDTLER (a 2B is more like a B). Nice to use, sharpen well - and look very posh with their Harrod's colour scheme.
STAEDTLER Tradition and Mars - There's very little between them - but I probably favour the Tradition slightly.
DERWENT (not pictured) - perhaps I got a bad batch but I kept getting those hideous scratchy impurities in them and haven't touched them since.

Verdict: Who'd have thought it. The cheap and cheerful STAEDTLER Tradition, available in every corner shop is as good a pencil as you're likely to find anywhere. The FABER CASTELLs are nice too but I'd give the round CONTÉ's a miss (which is a shame because the old type would have been the winner).

WAX - (FROM LIGHT TO DARK)
PRISMACOLOR Col-erase - the black version of the famous blue pencil used by animators the world over. It was a bit harder than I was expecting. Still, nice and waxy and good for making light marks.
BEROL Verithin - similar to use but a little darker than the Col-erase.
STAEDTLER Ergosoft - a useful shade, giving a good range. Triangular and comfortable to hold. It has a rubbery finish.
LYRA Super Ferby - nice wood finish but perhaps a bit too large to be really comfortable. Very slight brown tint.
STABILO Trio - Chunky but comfortable. Nice to use, soft - but again a very slight brownish tint.
PRISMACOLOR 935 - Lovely. Smooth, great range of shades. Brittle - I have to sharpen mine with a knife.
LYRA Color-Giant 9305 - A chunky wooden pencil as soft and good to use as the Prismacolor - and better to sharpen too! If only I could find more.

Verdict: PRISMACOLOR 935 and LYRA Color Giant are both fantastic - and both the hardest to get hold of here in the UK

CHARCOAL
CONTÉ 1710 2B - Beautiful to use - quite waxy for a charcoal type pencil. Very brittle - need to use a knife to sharpen.
WOLFF'S CARBON 2B - much drier than the Conté - no where near as nice to use.
STAEDTLER Mars 7B & 8B - these fall between the graphite and charcoal pencils. They hardly have a sheen but they're not as dark as the Conté. They sharpen well and are smooth to draw with - although slightly drier than typical graphite pencils.

Verdict: I really haven't made much use of the charcoal pencils so far as the dryness put me off. However the CONTÉ is rather special so I'm going to sketch something with it next time out.

To sum up, I like my pencils to be smooth. My favourite combination for loose sketching at A4 and larger is probably the Prismacolor 935 on Bristol paper. Smooth as anything, you can get a whole range of shades with very little smudging. I'd be equally happy with the LYRA Color-Giants. For smaller, tighter drawing I resort to a graphite pencil - and it'll be the trusty Staedtler Traditions from now on. (Unless I can find a cache of those hexagonal Contés somewhere).

Let me know your experiences and thoughts!

Styluses for iPad Sketching - Part 2

Since my last blog article which related my experiences with various iPad drawing implements I’ve been sent several new items to test. Two have the standard rubber tip - but are at opposite ends of the price scale - and two are pressure-sensitive - something I’ve lusted after for a long time.

Here they are, on the left is the Dagi stylus which was my favourite after the last review. Then there’s the Jukestyle, Cross Tech3, Pogo Connect and Hex3 Jaja.

First up, the Jukestyle. At $10 there aren’t many cheaper. The rubber tip is the same as most others and glides nicely over the screen. It can be pulled apart to reveal a biro - and joining the two pieces together makes the otherwise very short stylus a better length - great if like me, you like to hold your pencil quite far from the tip. The ink refill is a short, screw-in type which I’ve not seen before but I dare say a bit of Googling will find a replacement. The slim pen is nice to hold and a decent buy for anyone looking for a cheap and compact solution.

Rather more up market is the Cross Tech3. I’m not sure the pen lives up to the quality of the smart box it comes in - or the price tag (£30-£60). It’s just not very beautiful in my eyes. It is however, nice to have a stylus shaped like a normal pen and also, jolly useful. With the standard rubber stylus tip on one end, twisting the cap reveals a 0.5mm propelling pencil, a black biro and a red biro too. Not only that but the rubber tip can be unscrewed to reveal an eraser. It’s quite weighty and I found the highly polished surface a bit hard to hold on to while sketching - I tend to prefer lighter drawing and writing tools. To sum up, it’s probably better suited to a smart business person rather than a scruffy sketcher like me (who is particularly fussy about his drawing tools!)

On to the pressure-sensitive styluses. I’ve been using Wacom tablets with this feature on desktop machines for years but this is the first I’ve tried on an iPad. Pressure-sensitivity allows you to use pen pressure to vary your line thickness and opacity just as you can with real pens and pencils.

The £55 Pogo Connect is well made, with a brushed aluminium finish which gives good grip without being too heavy. It transmits the pressure information to the tablet using Bluetooth - and for that reason there’s a AAA battery inside it. Theres also a single button with an embedded light.

The Pogo Connect is perhaps one of the best supported of this sort of stylus and was suitable for my favourite drawing apps (currently Procreate and Adobe Ideas) and many more. It has the same rubber tip as those previously but the clever thing here is that it’s held in place magnetically - so should it ever wear through, you can buy replacements. The button can be set to provide a shortcut to the most common tools, like undo, and in most apps the coloured light would change colour to the colour you were using. It’s clearly a well thought out, quality product and I really wanted to like it but I didn’t find it pleasant to draw with for two reasons. Firstly, it took quite a lot of pressure to get the full range of stroke thicknesses and as you pressed more firmly the rubber tip would glide less well. (UPDATE: It seems the latest app update may have cured this - it certainly feels much better now and is nice to draw with. The update hasn't cured the next bit though...) Secondly, there’s a slight bug, which is that if you start to draw on the screen very lightly, using just the weight of the pen, it won’t leave a mark. If however you press a little harder first and then lift off to the very light pressure - it does work! It may be something they can fix but for now it’s the sort of thing that puts me off using it. If I touch a stylus to the screen I want it to make a mark!

The final stylus is the Hex3 Jaja ($90). Unlike the other pens in this review, the tip has a small disk similar in style to the plastic one on the Dagi - but made of teflon. I much prefer these over the rubber tips as they don’t obscure your line and glide better - but do make a small tapping noise on the glass.

Constructed with a mixture of gun metal coloured brushed aluminium, orange plastic and with a rubber grip it looks very high-tech. It’s also the longest stylus I’ve tried - a good thing in my books. Like the Pogo it uses a AAA battery - but not for Bluetooth - apparently it uses inaudible high-pitched sound to transmit the pressure info to the tablet. I can’t tell you if it’s annoying to animals as my cat is deaf. UPDATE: My eleven year old son can hear it from the next room!!!

I really enjoyed drawing with it. The tip glides very well even with quite firm pressure. There are two buttons on the side which can be set to perform useful in-app functions. I haven’t used it long enough to see how long the battery lasts but it’s a pleasure to use - by far the best I’ve tried. The only thing that’s missing for me at the moment is compatibility with Adobe Ideas.

The ability to draw using different line thicknesses without having to go to a menu speeds up the sketching process enormously. Also, the varied strokes that a stylus like this make are usually far more interesting than a drawing where every line has the same thickness. Below are a couple of quick sketches done from life using the Hex3 Jaja and the Procreate app. I’ll let you know how it goes in the long run...

UPDATE: Battery didn't last as long as expected - perhaps 3 or 4 hours of continuous use. I'll try to keep track of how long the next one lasts and perhaps invest in a set of rechargeables. Also, occasionally you'll get a blip where it briefly draws at maximum pressure, perhaps caused by a noise created by the pen on the glass? - but it doesn't happen often enough to put me off using it.

iPad paint software review

One of the reasons I haven't posted much lately is because I've been distracted by a new toy piece of serious technology which I need for work. I've always been a pc user and I'm not going to get into a pc/mac debate - there are things I like about both. Actually I don't really think of the iPad as a computer - I'm not entirely sure what it is. It's silent, keeps cool, doesn't need to boot up and the battery lasts all day. The interface is great and very intuitive - and then there's the apps...

I've had a lot of fun exploring all the strange games and widgets but for me the single most interesting thing was the ability to have photoshop-like software with me anywhere. I quickly downloaded a few of the most popular ones and although I've only been doodling so far I thought I'd share my experiences. First up...

Brushes. $7.99
Like:Not too laggy. Good selection of tweakable brushes without being too cluttered. Ability to play back sequence of strokes is brilliant. Layers.
Don't like: Can't make a dot (tapping screen brings up menu), Can't make quicktimes from playback on a PC (as far as I'm aware)


Sketchbook Pro. $7.99
Like: Least laggy of the ones i've tried so far. loads of features and brushes, layers, symmetry, clever shortcuts, speed sensitive stroke/opacity- even found some storyboard templates yesterday.


Livesketch. $1.99
This is like a cut down version of the Harmony procedural drawing program.
Like:It's reasonably fast, very pleasing and unexpected results.
Don't like: It's a pity it doesn't have a few more of the Harmony brushes.


Inspire Pro. £2.39
Haven't tried too much with this yet. It's supposed to simulate oils (not something I've done much of).
Like: reasonably fast, uncluttered, nice blending.
Don't like: Cant draw dots easily (you can do it by putting your finger down and twisting it), splash screen :)


Adobe Ideas. $Free.
Funny one this - I think it's vector based. You can zoom in to huge amounts and draw really detailed little drawings the size of ants. The brush strokes get smoothed too. To export the vector images you export to email - otherwise they get converted to jpegs.
Like: Fast, smoothing, large document size, palette creating tool
Don't like:Limited tools (a pen and an eraser). Have to pay for extra layers (but it is free so I can't really complain).


Artist's Touch. $4.99
Like: reasonably quick, nice splodgy paint daubs for gestural sketches.
Don't like: Colour palette interface (big long list), can't draw dots (brings up menu again)


Art Rage. $6.99
I'm a big fan of this on my PC - it's cheap, has excellent tools and a very intuitive interface.
Like:Tools, layers, everything really
Don't like: Unfortunately it's probably the most laggy - but I am starting to get used to working a little slower


That's it for now. It's not very in-depth and there may be some things which I'm wrong about because I haven't found everything out yet but it'll give you an overview of what's available. One other thing that's worth mentioning is that none of these have the ability to tweak contrast etc. so I found a useful free app called PhotoPad which will do that and more. So far I've really enjoyed drawing on the iPad - even though it's not pressure sensitive. I'll post some more pictures done with it soon.

Oh, and the boxwave stylus seems to work quite nicely too. A bit short but glides nicely over the screen.