Watercolor Pencils A Quick Comparison and Overview

Watercolors...I haven't mastered those by any means and I don't chose them for the majority of my work. I still like the effect, but I have much more control using watercolor pencils. I have accumulated 3 brands of water color pencils.

The first samples of colors are Derwent Inktense which I chose after completing the online academy class. There are 12? watercolor pencils in this tin. The brand is fancy and they do have a lot of color packed in there. What I find with these pencils is they don't completely blend. There is always a hint of a color pencil line no matter how hard I try to blend it. By the time I do it becomes a watery puddle of pilled paper.

The 2nd set I am sharing was a clearance set of Staedtler Ergosoft Aquarell water color pencils from Michael's. I think you can find them at any art store really. These pencils are triangular shaped and this package has 12 colors. You have to apply them very thick to maintain the color through out the piece.

The 3rd set of water color pencils is a student brand called "Reeves". Also predominant at Michael's but could be found elsewhere as well. I used these in a class with my son at school to watercolor "Picasso Dogs" which eliminates the messy mess of drying trays, mixed colors, etc. Of the three sets I've used I truly LOVE this one the best. They are fluid and soft to color on the paper and they blend like magic leaving no lines or minimal lines if you choose you want them.

Check out some of these pictures and you can see what I have described above.
 First I used a heavy true watercolor paper. I used the same-ish colors from each pencil and drew them on the paper. You can see how some are more like crayon colorings than pencils. That is simply the lack of fluidity they have coming out of the pencil when applied to the paper.

 Below, I have marked the watercolor pencils by brand. You are able to see the qualities in how they blend or not in the examples. Specifically on the red, orange, and blue of the Derwent, I find that the coloring line marks remain no matter how much I try to blend.

Staedtler are a nice option for blending, but they aren't as soft a lead to apply to the paper as the Reeves. In the end, for the amount of coloring and need to blend I would use the Reeves student inexpensive brand of color pencils. On brand that I did not cover here would be Prismacolor watercolor pencils. I have no experience with them but truly love the regular Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils for colored pencil drawings.