Derwent Coloursoft Review

Article written February 2017

Derwent Coloursoft are an exciting range of 72 coloured pencils. The soft, velvety strip allows you to quickly add lots of bold, vibrant colour to your drawing and they're great for colouring in! They're also blendable so you can create a variety of subtly different tones and shades.
Taken from the Derwent website - www.pencils.co.uk

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CHARACTERISTICS

BASE: ​Wax Based

HARD OR SOFT LEAD:  Soft

LIGHTFAST RATING: Blue Wool Scale

COSTS (AVE): RRP £1.90

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Wooden box set

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​Colours Available: 72
13 Greens, 8 Blues, 6 pinks, 9 purples, 4 yellows, 4 oranges,  5 reds, 6 greys, 14 browns, Cream, Black, White

Sets Available:
Open stock (Individually) Pack of 6 (starter colours), In a tin of 6 (skin tones) Tin of 12, 24, 36 & 72 colours 
​Also available in a wooden box containing 48 or 72 pencils

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ADVANTAGES
* Softness of the pencil allows for great blendability
* Allows for multiple layers
* Well known company - Many local Art stores and online stores                  stock them nationally & Internationally
* Strong colour application
* More affordable
​* Can be used with blenders for smooth colour transition

DISADVANTAGES
* Some lightfast ratings are very poor meaning these colours can quickly fade
* As they are soft leads, care must be taken not to damage them
* Not easy to create very fine detailed Art due to the softness of the leads

Coloursoft packaging - Tin of 72

My secondary Coloured Pencil range

For me only using one brand of pencil for every piece of Art I create is not suitable as I choose to create highly detailed pencil portraits and these require both a harder, finer point as well as a softer point to create smooth, tonal areas and this is where the Coloursoft pencils come in. Both my pencil ranges are wax based and so work very well together.

One of the softest coloured pencil ranges

Soft leads are far easier to apply & blend for tonal areas such as backgrounds & foregrounds or for smooth subjects such as skin and using a BLENDER also can help to smooth these tones even further. There is an element of caution with soft leads though as there is a possibility that leads can easily break if dropped, and they may crumble easier when sharpening them especially if using an electric sharpener due to the power, in my own experience of using these pencils however, I have never had one problem with breakages or trouble sharpening the leads easily but it is important to always be careful with softer lead pencils.

See how the Coloursoft Pencils compare against other popular pencil brands

Lightfastness:

These pencils are coded by the 'Blue Wool' lightfast rating and their lightfast rating varies with many of the pinks being the worst rating as well as the odd blues and greens too. The highest colourfast ratings are the browns, oranges and greys with some of the darker blues, greens and purples being the strongest too. Check the chart if you have any of these pencils at home to see how lightfast they are. You don't need to throw out these poor rated lightfast pencils, you can create Artwork simply to create prints from, spray the finished Artwork with a UV protection Fixative and ensure the final portrait is framed behind a UV or museum quality glass in frame, however I would recommend limiting the use of poor lightfast colours, do not apply to large parts of a drawing and you can always create the same colour using a more lightfast, darker tone and lightening it with the white pencil.  Hopefully in the future, Derwent are able to improve the lightfast rating.  

How is the 'Blue wool' rating achieved?

The Blue Wool Scale measures and calibrates the permanence of colouring dyes. Traditionally this test was developed for the textiles industry but it has now been adopted by the printing industry as measure of lightfastness of ink colourants. Normally two identical dye samples are created. One is placed in the dark as the control and the other is placed in the equivalent of sunlight for a three-month period. A standard bluewool textile fading test card is also placed in the same light conditions as the sample under test. The amount of fading of the sample is then assessed by comparison to the original colour. A rating between 0 and 8 is awarded by identifying which one of the eight strips on the bluewool standard card has faded to the same extent as the sample under test. Zero denotes extremely poor colour fastness whilst a rating of eight is deemed not to have altered from the original and thus credited as being lightfast and permanent.
Taken from the Wikipedia website

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Other related articles that may be of interest

Tonal layering tutorial with Derwent Coloursoft pencils

Ursus - Coloured paper for pencil work

New to Coloured pencils? This article is for you...

Comparing the Coloursoft pencils against other brands

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So, What can they achieve?

The majority of my work are Pets, Wildlife & Human portraiture and my findings are mainly based on these subjects.  I also use a mixture of Derwent Coloursoft & the Caran Dache Luminance for tonal and detailed backgrounds and find they work well together due to them both being wax based. Here are some examples of suitability for the Derwent Coloursoft pencils:​

Layering over Derwent Coloursoft pencils

Base pencils for underlayering

Both pencil ranges are important in my work and I find the Coloursoft pencils work best for applying both the under layers and creating tonal backgrounds simply because the leads are softer and they are easier to apply over larger areas without pressing into the paper or leaving any heavy lines and this allows them to blend far easier and give a softer finish.  The Coloursoft pencils work well as a base for my main pencil range the Caran Dache Luminance which is slightly firmer and offers a finer point which are used for the secondary layers to give the fine details. As you can see from the image here, the Derwent white pencil is not as bright as the Luminance white pencil but when working on tonal paper of a subject with lots of white areas I will apply the Coloursoft pencil as an underlayer and follow it up with the Luminance white which really gives strong highlights.

Find out more about the paper I am using here

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Great for soft focal backgrounds

Tonal areas/backgrounds

Any portrait I create that has a tonal background or foreground, I will always reach for the Coloursoft pencils. As they are wax based, the 'lead' tends to be softer and this makes it easier to gently build up tonal layers as well as applying to larger areas for a quicker application. ​The Coloursoft pencils are much easier to blend especially if using a blender avoiding any heavy lines which can spoil the 'out of focus' appearance and be impossible to smooth out.  The Coloursoft collection offers a great range of earthy tones for natural environment compositions and as you can see here, the focus is on the Springer Spaniel as it should be.

Find out more about the Caran dache Luminance pencils

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The pigments in these pencils are strong and vibrant

Vibrant colours

The Coloursoft pencils have a great range of subtle and bright colours suitable for almost any subject and composition.  Perfect for subjects such as this little girl's brightly coloured dress and working on bright white paper will really show off the vibrancy of the pencil colours. The Coloursoft range have some vibrant pinks, purples & blues but also subtle tones for those natural subjects. This range also offers you the opportunity to exaggerate colours in your Art as you have the choice to create a more neutral 'photocopy' of the original subject or blast up the colour for intensity and great effect.​

Why not try out our 'tonal layering' exercise using the Coloursoft pencils

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