Last April I got a Scrawlrbox with some Faber Castell Albrecht Durer products, both watercolor brush pens and some of these Magnus pencils. I remember swatching the pencils and LOVING them.
Before this time, the only watercolor pencils I owned was a very inexpensive student grade set from Arteza. I'm NOT knocking those pencils and I still use them all the time! But I knew I wanted something that I could use more regularly and that had lightfastness ratings. I also wanted to invest in something that I could replace open stock, so I started watching TONS of reviews and trying to decide what I wanted to do. Here's what I learned:
1. I think the Derwent Inktense products would be amazing to own, but they are not traditional watercolors. Because of this I decided against this investment for the time being.... BUT Derwent just came out with a beautiful 24 half pan of Inktense pans... so that might be in the future!
2. There are several brands that I think are worth the money, but only one of them was something I had tested (FC Albrecht Durer). Because of this, I was much more interested in buying these pencils if I could get them.
3. These pencils look massive, but they actually work really well for my hands. I have had issues with carpal tunnel for years, and so the bigger pencils work really well for me. This pencil size was my ultimate reason for deciding to buy these over other brands.
4. The Magnus pencils are the same as the regular Albrecht Durer line, just larger. This means that if the Magnus line, which is only 30 colors right now, is missing a color, I can always just buy a regular size AD pencil open stock to supplement the set.
So, these were all of the things that I took into consideration before purchasing this set. I looked at Caran D'Ache Supracolor, Faber Castell AD, Derwent Inktense, and Prismacolor Premier as my potential purchases. Once I decided on the AD Magnus pencils, I got a fabulous deal on this set of 24 pencils:
Swatching and Initial Thoughts:
1. The colors are beautiful and intense!
2. The pencils are smooth and easy to use! They are large but definitely can still get fine details if they are sharpened.
3. The color range was, mostly good. I was initially frustrated because there wasn't a good cool red/pink option, or a color akin to a dioxazine purple. Both of those are kind of important if I'm going to use them for florals, so my goal was to find ways to mix those colors. I was able to get close, BUT I went searching the open stock AD Magnus pencils and found out that they had two pencils that matched those needs exactly! I bought the open stock colors and replaced them with a warm red and "ultramarine light," which honestly just seems like ultramarine with filler added. NOW I feel like my set is well balanced and will allow me to do anything I want for my personal style of artwork.
Artwork and Testing:
I have been using these for about 2 months now, and so I've tried these pencils on several different types of situations in order to give a full and robust review. Here are several of the artworks that I used these pencils on and my thoughts.
- They work really well in a mixed media setting. Once set with water, they don't lift when posca pens, fine liners or bleed proof white/white gouache were used overtop of them. The resistance to the white mediums was particularly fabulous!
- The pencils dissolved completely with water BUT they also kept texture and didn't let colors run together. This especially made my monstera leaf picture really beautiful.
- The pencils can both cover a large area and be used for fine details.
- The pencils had the ability to blend and mix an entire background beautifully. I was extremely impressed with their ultra pigmentation in that situation.
- Using my Caran D'Ache pencil palette, they mix into extra colors beautifully. I cannot stress enough how great the palette is, and that it is easily the best $12 I have ever spent on a mixing palette. (I got mine on Amazon)
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